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WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 



OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



HISTORICAL 

The Romance of American Expansion 
Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road 



PSYCHOLOGICAL 

The Riddle of Personality 

Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters 

Scientific Mental HeaHng 




MARTHA WASHINGTON. 

From the paintin? by Woolaston. 

Frontispiece. 



Woman in the Making 
of America 



BY 

H. ADDINGTON BRUCE 



Illustrated 



BOSTON 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1912 



Ker- 



Copyright, 1912, 
By Little, Brown, and Company. 

All rights reserved 
Published, October, 1912 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 
C. H. 8IMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A. 



€CI.A327194 (K^ 



I 



TO THE MEMORY 
OF 

MRS. KATHERINE F. BOWES 

OF BOSTON 

ONE OF THE NOBLE ARMY OF AMERICAN WOMEN 

WHOSE LIVES, UNKNOWN TO HISTORY, HAVE BEEN 

A FORCEFUL INFLUENCE IN THE STRENGTHENING 

OF THE NATION, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 

IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE 



PREFACE 

The present volume is an outgrowth of 
studies I have for some years been making 
for a general history of the political, economic, 
social, and territorial expansion of the United 
States. The more I became acquainted with 
the facts of the national evolution, the more 
I was impressed by the part woman has 
had therein. In the determination of grave 
constitutional and moral issues, such as those 
which led to the War for Independence and 
the Civil War; in the great migratory move- 
ment by which the people of the seaboard 
colonies and their descendants conquered the 
Alleghany mountain barrier, pressed forward 
into the Mississippi Valley, and thence in 
time advanced to the Rocky Mountains, and 
beyond the Rockies to the shore of the Pacific 
[vii] 



PREFACE 

Ocean; in the growth of commerce and in- 
dustry, of culture, of education — in all these, 
and in every other phase of the nation's history, 
I found women playing an active part, and 
exercising a tremendous influence. I also 
found that nowhere was there available a 
continuous record of what woman has contrib- 
uted to the upbuilding of the Republic, from 
the earliest to the latest times; and I deter- 
mined, if the opportunity offered, to do some- 
thing in the way of supplying such a record, 
both as a matter of simple historical justice 
and because of the unquestionable historical 
importance of the subject. 

I do not pretend that in this book I have told 
in full the story of woman's work in America. 
To do that would have required many volumes, 
and would have necessitated far-extending 
researches for which I could never have hoped 
to find the time. My aim has been simply 
to indicate the various directions in which 
woman's activities have been most beneficial; 
[ viii 1 



PREFACE 

to help in making the present generation better 
acquainted with some of the great American 
women of other times; and to provide, as it 
were, a starting-point from which some future 
historian may proceed to present a far more 
detailed record than I have found possible. 
Even as it is, the preparation of this little 
volume has been no light task, so manifold 
are the sources to which I have been obliged 
to resort — State papers, family records, mem- 
oirs, biographies, books of travel, special his- 
tories, publications of learned societies, etc. 
That I have been able to carry my labors 
to completion is largely owing to the courtesy 
of the authorities of Harvard University Li- 
brary, who have given me, since I began my 
explorations in the field of American history, 
the readiest access to their rich storehouse of 
historical material. 

For much helpful information I also owe a 
debt of gratitude to officers of the General 
Federation of Women's Clubs, the American 
[ix] 



PREFACE 

Civic Association, the National Woman's 
Christian Temperance Union, and other organ- 
izations. But most of all I am indebted to my 
wife, herself an embodiment of the best in 
American womanhood, for many invaluable 
suggestions, and still more for the stimulus of 
a companionship that has been a constant 
inspiration to literary endeavor. 

H. Addington Bruce. 

Cambridge, Mass., May, 1912. 



x] 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface vii 

I. In the Time of the Founding . . 1 
II. Later Colonial Belles and House- 
wives 44 

III. The Women of the Revolution . 81 

IV. Heroines of the Westward Move- 

ment 115 

V. The Struggle over Slavery . . 156 

VI. Woman's Work in the Civil War . 188 

VII. The Women of To - day ... 224 

Index 253 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Martha Washington . . . Frontispiece 

From the painting by Woolaston . 

PAGE 

Monument to Hannah Duston, Haverhill, 
Massachusetts 15 

The Hannah Robinson House, Saunders- 
town, Rhode Island 59 

Old Indian Fort near Newmanstown, 
Pennsylvania 72 

Deborah Sampson 92 

From an old engraving. 

Fort Henry 127 

From an old wood engraving. 

*' Mother " Bickerdyke 207 

From an engraving. 

Julia Ward Howe in 1865 .... 214 

From a photograph. 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING 
OF AMERICA 

CHAPTER I 

IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

WHEN Alexis de Tocqueville made his 
celebrated tour of the United States, 
one of the things which most deeply impressed 
him was the respect paid to the women of the 
country. " In the United States," he after- 
wards wrote, " men seldom compliment women, 
but they daily show how much they esteem 
them. They constantly display an entire 
confidence in the understanding of a wife, and 
a profound respect for her freedom." 

Other foreign visitors have since made the 
same discovery, and have usually commented 
o^ it with an air of surprise. But to anybody 

[1] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

acquainted with what may be called the inner 
history of the United States — with the forces 
that have contributed to its steady growth and 
progress — there is nothing surprising in the 
attitude of American men toward American 
women. It is largely the expression of an in- 
herited and instinctive appreciation of the 
notable part woman has played in shaping 
the destinies of America. De Tocqueville 
himself had at least a glimmering of this 
truth. "If I were asked," he declared em- 
phatically, " to what the singular prosperity 
and growing strength of the American people 
ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply 
— to the superiority of their women." 

Unfortunately, historians have not seen fit 
to bring into clear relief the wonderful person- 
alities and glowing achievements of the women 
whose lives have counted for so much in the 
making of the United States. They have had 
a great deal to say about the forefathers of 
America, but comparatively little about the 
[2] 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

foremothers. So that while the Americans of 
to-day, like the Americans of de Tocqueville's 
time, instinctively respect and appreciate the 
American woman, they have no very definite 
knowledge of what she has meant to the national 
development. 

Not everybody realizes, for instance, that 
the foundation stone of the great republic — 
the English colonization of America — was 
successfully laid only by the help of a little 
company of women. Yet this is one of the 
best-authenticated facts in the history of 
America's infancy. 

As is well known, the earliest permanent 
English settlement was established at James- 
town in 1607. Unlike the Pilgrims and the 
Puritans, who followed them a few years later, 
the first colonists did not come to the Amer- 
ican wilds because of religious persecution at 
home. They were sent out by a commercial 
corporation, the Virginia Company, which 
expected to reap rich profits by developing 
[3] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

the resources of the New World. In fact, the 
great motive for the enterprise was the hope 
of finding gold and silver mines. 

This failing, the settlers turned to the cul- 
tivation of tobacco, and were soon exporting 
it in great quantities to England, where it 
found a ready market at high prices. But 
though rapidly making money for themselves 
as well as for the Virginia Company, they were 
far from satisfied. They suffered greatly from 
the climate, and still more from the mismanage- 
ment of the authorities placed over them. They 
got on none too well with their Indian neigh- 
bors. Most of all, they missed the joys of 
domestic life, the welcoming smiles and warm 
greetings of wives and children after the day's 
work was done. 

Not a woman had accompanied them from 
the old country. In the following year two 
arrived, a Mistress Forrest and her maid, 
Anne Burras. Eager suitors quickly laid siege 
to the latter, whose marriage to John Laydon 
14] 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

is memorable as the first English wedding in 
the New World. Otherwise, for more than ten 
years, the colonists were virtually dependent 
on Indian squaws for feminine society. 

In vain they begged the Virginia Company 
to promote the emigration of women who should 
make them wives. No attention was paid 
to their petitions and complaints, and they 
constantly grew more restless, discontented, 
and unhappy. All the while, too, misgovern- 
ment increased, until at last they were ready 
to rise in open rebellion. 

Just at this time, a group of patriotic and 
far-sighted Englishmen obtained control of 
the Virginia Company. At their head was the 
liberty-loving Sir Edwin Sandys, who, if any 
one man is deserving of the honor, may fairly 
be called the founder of the United States. 
Sandys saw clearly that the colony could not 
thrive without self-government, and he drew 
up a plan which resulted in the creation of the 
Virginia House of Burgesses, the first really 
[5] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

representative American legislative body. He 
also saw that self-government was not enough, 
that in order to build up a sound social organ- 
ization the colonists must have the helpmates 
they so insistently demanded. 

" We must find them wives," he bluntly 
told his associates, " in order that they may 
feel at home in Virginia." ^ 

A scheme that makes curious reading to-day 
was soon devised. The Virginia Company 
undertook to advance the passage-money of 
the prospective brides, but every successful 
suitor among the colonists was to pay to the 
company one hundred and twenty pounds of 
" best leaf tobacco," and no one was eligible 
to become a suitor unless he could prove that 
he had the means to support a wife. 

Under these conditions ninety " young, hand- 
some, honestly educated maids, of honest life 
and carriage," were induced to take ship for 

1 "The Records of the Vh*ginia Company of London," 
vol. i, p. 269. 

[61 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

Virginia. They did not know, as we now know, 
that by thus adventuring with fate they were 
helping to lay the foundations of one of the 
greatest nations in the history of the world. 
They were merely poor but worthy girls, 
prayerfully hopeful that they would find good 
husbands among the strangers over the 
water. 

And in this they were not disappointed. 
The early Virginians shared to the full the 
feeling so well expressed by good old Gov- 
ernor Spottswood a century later: "Whoever 
brings a poor gentlewoman into so soli- 
tary a place from all her friends and ac- 
quaintances, would be ungrateful not to use 
her with all possible tenderness." Such was 
the welcome given the " leaf tobacco " brides, 
and so fondly were they cherished by the 
men whom they married, that they soon wrote 
home enthusiastically advising others to follow 
their example. More brides came, and still 
more, and after them whole families. There 
[7] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

was no longer any danger that Virginia would 
be a failure. Saved from the state of " soli- 
tary uncouthness," as one planter termed it, the 
settlers turned with contentment to their 
daily tasks and to their self-imposed mission 
of winning the wilderness for civilization. 

As in Virginia, so in every colony. Whether 
they came with the first or with later arrivals, 
women exercised a refining, ennobling, and in- 
spiring influence, bringing out the best that 
was in their husbands and sons, and sharing 
without a murmur the hardships inevitable 
in the opening up of a new country. When 
they left their native land, they had no illusions 
about the life that lay before them. They 
knew it would be rough, harsh, and dangerous, 
and that it would mean unending hazard and 
labor. But they faced it courageously for 
the sake of those they loved. 

The picture of the Pilgrim mothers, falling 
upon their knees on the deck of the Mayflower to 
thank God for a safe journey, and then going 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

ashore to wash clothes,^ is eloquently descrip- 
tive of the spirit shown by all the women of 
early America. They had come not for a life 
of ease, but to play their part earnestly in 
the home-making for the men. 

There was no task, however difficult or un- 
pleasant, from which they shrank. When 
occasion demanded they willingly went into 
the fields to break the ground, sow seed, or 
aid in harvesting the ripened grain. They lent 
a hand in the actual building of the rude log 
cabins that sheltered them; and, in Pennsyl- 
vania, in burrowing out the caves in which the 
Quaker pioneers took refuge along the banks 
of the Delaware River. As Deborah Morris 
tells us, in her narrative of the experiences 
of her aunt, Elizabeth Hard: 

" All that came wanted a dwelling and 
hastened to provide one. As they lovingly 
helped each other, the women even set them- 
selves to work that they had not been used to 

1 " Mourt's Relation," p. 12 (H. M, Dexter's edition). 
[91 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

before; for few of the first settlers were of 
the laborous class, and help of that source was 
scarce. My good aunt thought it expedient 
to help her husband at the end of the saw, and 
to fetch all such water to make such kind of 
mortar as they then had to build their chimney." 

This was a typical experience of the first 
mothers of America, as was Mrs. Hard's un- 
pleasant discovery, when she left the saw and 
made ready to cook dinner, that the larder was 
empty. For a moment she felt downhearted, 
but only for a moment. 

" Didst thou not come for liberty of con- 
science.^ " she asked herself. " Hast thou 
not got it, also been provided for beyond 
thy expectation.'^ " 

Kneeling in the tattered tent which was then 
her home, she humbly begged the divine for- 
giveness and aid. As she rose from her prayer, 
in walked the family cat, bearing in its mouth 
a fine large rabbit.^ 

1 A. H. Wharton's " Colonial Days and Dames," p. 68. 

fioi 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

Even in these first and most painful years 
there were compensations for the sacrifices 
women were called on to make, and the hard- 
ships they so patiently endured. They were 
sure of the devotion of their husbands — the 
colonial records are surprisingly free from refer- 
ences to matrimonial discord — and they were 
surrounded by healthy, happy, and loving 
children. They had the joys that come of 
living in a home of one's own, however humble. 
And, in the case of those who had emigrated 
for conscience' sake, they had the satisfaction 
of knowing that they dwelt in communities 
closely knit together by identity of religious 
belief. 

Thus it was that, no matter how hard the lines 
in which their lives were cast, the American pio- 
neer women were able to make the American 
pioneer home a center from which cheerfulness 
and sunshine unfailingly radiated. This, it need 
scarcely be said, meant much to the men, and 
so did the rugged, virile qualities which their 
fill 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

wives and sisters and daughters displayed in 
times of great emergency. 

The severest demands were made, of course, 
on those colonists who pressed forward from 
the settlements by the sea into the lonely 
depths of the inland forests. Here they were 
menaced not only by wild beasts but by the 
enmity of the native inhabitants, who, friendly 
enough at first, soon began to resent any further 
invasion of their ancestral lands. In face of this 
double danger, the women showed themselves 
no less resolute and courageous than the men. 

They learned the art of molding bullets and 
loading muskets, and how to use all manner 
of weapons of defense. Many of them became 
expert shots. And when the Indians at last 
took the war-path in earnest, and raged along 
the border with torch and scalping-knife, they 
met a brave resistance from countless heroines. 
Nor did defeat, the slaughter of their loved ones, 
and their own captivity, break the spirit of 
the dauntless frontiers women. 
fl21 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

Perhaps the most striking illustration of 
the truth of this is to be found in the story of 
Hannah Duston.^ 

When King William's War was at its height, 
a band of Canadian Indians swooped down on 
the Massachusetts settlement of Haverhill, 
killed nearly thirty of the inhabitants, and made 
prisoners of thirteen women and children. 
Among the captives were Mrs. Duston and 
her new-born babe, whose wailing a heartless 
warrior soon stilled forever by snatching the 
helpless infant from its mother's arms and beat- 
ing it to death against a tree. Others of the 
prisoners, who could not keep up with the ter- 
rific pace set by the raiders as they retreated 
toward Canada, were ruthlessly tomahawked. 
And when, at nightfall, the survivors sank 
wearily to the ground, and gaspingly prayed 
that God would preserve them, they were 
mocked with derisive laughter. 

1 S. G. Drake's " Indian Wars," pp. 315-317 (Edition of 
1837). 

[131 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

" What need you trouble yourselves? " jeered 
the Indians. " If your God will have you de- 
livered, it shall be so." 

Finally, after several days of the hardest 
travel, the war-party broke up into several small 
detachments, among which the prisoners were 
distributed. Mrs. Duston,a friend of hers named 
Mary Neff, and a young boy fell to the lot of 
a chief who tauntingly informed the unhappy 
women that he intended making them " run 
the gauntlet " in an Indian village just across 
the border. In their enfeebled condition, this 
was the same as sentencing them to death, 
and at once Mrs. Duston came to a desperate 
resolution. 

" Look you," she told Mrs. Neff, " we are 
dead women unless we now escape. And we 
can escape only over the bodies of our masters. 
We must kill them to-night, or perish our- 
selves." 

Taking the boy, Samuel Leonardson, into 
her confidence, she asked him to find 
[14] 




MONUMENT TO HANNAH DUSTON, HAVERHILL, MASSACHUSETTS. 

Page 15. 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

out just how to kill by a single blow. Brave 
and quickwitted, young Samuel readily 
gained this knowledge from an unsuspecting 
Indian. 

" He told me to * strike here/ " he whispered 
to Mrs. Duston, at the same time laying a 
finger on his temple. Grimly she nodded, and 
counted the minutes till sunset. 

That night while the Indians — ten or twelve 
in all, including some squaws — were slumber- 
ing soundly about their camp-fire on the bank 
of the Merrimac, the two women and the boy 
rose stealthily to their feet. Like avenging 
furies they bent over the sleepers, tomahawk 
in hand, and dealt blow after blow in rapid 
and fatal succession. The very Indian who had 
shown the boy how to make death swift and 
silent was the first to die under his pupil's tom- 
ahawk. None escaped except one young In- 
dian lad and a squaw, who, badly wounded, 
ran screaming into the forest. 

Then followed the gory work of scalping 
[15] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

the dead — for Mrs. Duston was nothing if 
not thorough, and she knew that without the 
ghastly trophies no one would believe her tale 
— and after this a canoe was launched and the 
homeward voyage begun. 

It is pleasant to be able to add that the 
daring trio reached Haverhill in safety, though 
half dead from fatigue and hunger; that the 
news of their exploit sped like wild-fire through 
the colonies; that the Great and General 
Court of Massachusetts voted all three of 
them a goodly reward; and that even the gov- 
ernor of faraway Maryland sent a pewter 
tankard to Mrs. Duston as evidence of his ad- 
miration for the pluck, resourcefulness, and 
self-reliance she had shown. 

On a different order but similarly illustra- 
tive of the tragic experiences and sterling 
characteristics of the women of early New 
England, is the story of the captivity of Mrs. 
Mary Rowlandson as told by herself in one 
of the most remarkable narratives coming to 
116] 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

us from those long-gone times. ^ Mrs. Rowland- 
son was the wife of the Reverend Joseph Row- 
landson, pastor at Lancaster, Massachusetts, 
a settlement which, in February, 1676, was 
raided and laid in ashes by a large body of 
Nashua and Nipmuck Indians under the leader- 
ship of one of the chief lieutenants of the re- 
doubtable King Philip. The red men, as was 
their custom, attacked the place soon after 
dawn, and those of the settlers who had time 
to do so fled for protection to the Rowlandson 
house, the largest in Lancaster. After burning 
the outlying cabins and killing a number of 
fugitives whom they intercepted, Mrs. Row- 
landson tells us, in language that could scarcely 
be improved as a vivid portrayal of the horrors 
of the raid : 

" At length they came and beset our house; 

^ " The Soveraignty and Goodness of God, Together 
with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed. Being a 
Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary 
Rowlandson, Written by her own Hand for her private 
Use, and now made Public at the earnest Desire of some 
Friends." First printed in 1682. 

[17] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

and quickly it was the dolefullest day that 
mine eyes ever saw. 

" The house stood up on the edge of a hill. 
Some of the Indians got behind the hill, others 
into the barn, and others behind anything that 
would shelter them; from all which places they 
shot against the house, so that the bullets 
seemed to fly like hail; and quickly they 
wounded one man among us, then another, and 
then a third. 

" About two hours, according to my ob- 
servation in that amazing time, they had been 
about the house before they prevailed to fire 
it, which they did with flax and hemp which 
they brought out of the barn. And there being 
no defense about the house, only two old 
flankers at two opposite corners, and one of 
them not finished, they fired it once; and one 
ventured out and quenched it. But they 
quickly fired it again; and that took. 

" Now is the dreadful hour come that I 
have often heard of in the time of the war, as 
[18] 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

it was the case of others; but now mine eyes 
see it. 

" Some in our house were fighting for their 
lives, others wallowing in blood, the house on 
fire over our heads, and the bloody heathen 
ready to knock us on the head if we stirred out. 

" Now might we hear mothers and children 
crying out for themselves and one another, 
' Lord, what shall we do? ' 

" Then I took my children and one of my 
sister's girls, to go forth and leave the house; 
but, as soon as we came to the door and ap- 
peared, the Indians shot so thick that the 
bullets rattled against the house as if one had 
taken a handful of stones and threw them; 
so that we were forced to give back. . . . But 
out we must go, the fire increasing and coming 
along behind us roaring, and the Indians ga- 
ping before us with their spears and hatchets 
to devour us. 

" No sooner were we out of the house, but 
my brother-in-law (being before wounded in 
[19] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

defending the house, in or near the throat) 
fell down dead; whereat the Indians scornfully 
shouted and hallooed, and were presently 
upon him stripping off his clothes. 

" The bullets flying thick, one went through 
my side, and the same (as would seem) through 
the bowels and hand of my poor child in my 
arms. 

" One of my elder sister's children, named 
William, had then his leg broken, which the 
Indians perceiving knocked him on the head. 

" Thus were we butchered by those merciless 
heathen, standing amazed, with the blood 
running down our heels. 

" My eldest sister, seeing her William and 
others dead, exclaimed, * Lord, let me die with 
them! ' At the same moment a bullet struck 
her; and she fell down dead over the threshold. 

" The Indians laid hold of us, pulling me 

one way and the children another, and said, 

* Come, go along with us.' I told them they 

would kill me. They answered, ' If I were 

[20] 



- IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

willing to go along with them they would not 
hurt me.' " 

This marked the beginning of an agonizing 
captivity, during which Mrs. Rowlandson, 
separated from all her children but the wounded 
one, was taken from place to place in central 
and western Massachusetts, and up into New 
Hampshire. For the first week, despite the 
pain of her own wound, she carried her stricken 
child in her arms, ever praying that it would 
survive. But this consolation was denied her, 
the little one dying in an Indian wigwam on 
the eighth night of the captivity. For two days 
afterwards she hugged the tiny corpse to her 
breast, until the Indians, moved to some de- 
gree of pity by the sight of her intense grief, 
took it forcibly from her and buried it. 

And now, rallying from the shock of her 
bereavement and of the terrible scenes through 
which she had passed, and determining to 
make every effort to rejoin her husband, who 
fortunately for himself had been absent from 
[21] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

Lancaster the day of the raid, Mrs. Rowlandson 
sought to gain the confidence of the Indians by 
accompanying them without the sHghtest pro- 
test in all their aimless wanderings. It was her 
hope that their watchfulness might suflSciently 
relax to allow her to make her escape. They 
did, it is true, become friendly and kind to her; 
yet at no time did an opportunity for flight 
present itself. To add to her trials the food 
supply began to run low, and she was soon put 
on the most meagre diet. The extent to which 
she suffered in this respect — but suffered un- 
complainingly — may readily be inferred from 
a passing reference in her narrative to a curious 
adventure she had with King Philip himself, 
whom she met for the first time about a month 
after she had been taken prisoner. 

" Philip," she says, " spoke to me to make 
a shirt for his boy, which I did; for which he 
gave me a shilling. I offered the money to my 
mistress; but she bid me keep it, and with it 
I bought a piece of horse-flesh. Afterwards 
[221 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

he asked me to make a cap for his boy, for 
which he invited me to dinner. I went; and 
he gave me a pancake about as big as two 
fingers; it was made of parched wheat, beaten, 
and fried in bear's grease ; but I thought I never 
tasted pleasanter meat in my Hfe." 

In the end the seeming misfortune of 
starvation proved of the happiest fortune to 
her. The New England authorities, spurred 
to action by Mr. Rowlandson's ceaseless en- 
treaties, offered King Philip a liberal reward 
for her release; and Philip, himself in urgent 
need of sustenance, was prompt to accept it. 
Once freed, Mrs. Rowlandson made her way 
to Boston, and there, with courage unabated 
and rejoicing in the similarly effected liberation 
of her surviving children, joined with her hus- 
band in the task of upbuilding a new home.^ 

Courage, endurance, and independence of 

spirit were, indeed, prime characteristics of 

1 The Rowlandsons removed to Wethersfield, Connecticut, 
in 1677, Mr. Rowlandson having been appointed pastor of 
the church there. 

[231 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

the pioneer women in times of peace as well 
as in times of war. Though, like the women of 
all ages and all lands, they instinctively looked 
to men for support and protection, they could, 
if need be, make their own way in the world, 
and make it well. 

This brings us to a most interesting fact — 
namely, that it is a great mistake to suppose 
that the American " business woman " is a 
modern product. She was present and took 
a conspicuous part in the early development 
of every American colony. Thus, among the 
founders of Taunton in Massachusetts was a 
certain Elizabeth Poole, who, according to 
the inscription on her tombstone, was " a 
great proprietor of the township of Taunton, 
a chief promoter of its settlement." In fact, 
an entry in Governor Winthrop's journal, 
under date of 1637, leaves no doubt that she 
was one of the first settlers in that section of 
the Bay State. " This year," the entry runs, 
" a plantation was begun at Tecticutt by a 
[241 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

gentlewoman, an ancient maid, one Mrs. Poole. 
She went late thither, and endured much hard- 
ship and lost much cattle." 

A nineteen-year-old girl named Elizabeth 
Haddon made the long oversea journey to 
open up a tract of land which her father had 
secured in New Jersey, and her fame is perpet- 
uated in the name of the town of Haddonfield. 
Madame Mary Ferree, the widow of a French 
Huguenot, was the energetic cultivator of 
twenty-five hundred acres of land in Pennsyl- 
vania. Governor Winthrop of New Haven, son 
of the celebrated Winthrop of Massachusetts, 
found one of his ablest assistants in the person 
of Mrs. John Davenport, wife of the local 
minister. New York, Boston, and Philadelphia 
boasted " merchant princesses " while they 
were still little better than villages. In Vir- 
ginia the records remind us of several " acute, 
ingenious gentlewomen " who operated pros- 
perous tobacco plantations. 

But by far the most remarkable among the 
[251 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

first American women of business was Mrs. 
Margaret Brent of Maryland. Not only did 
she win distinction as a financier, but she was 
the first American " suffragette." Coming to 
Maryland in 1638, she so gained the confidence 
of her kinsman, Governor Leonard Calvert, 
that in his will he named her as his sole execu- 
trix. One of her first acts in this capacity was 
to quell a budding mutiny among Maryland's 
small army by selling some of the state cattle 
to meet the soldiers' arrears of pay. Lord 
Baltimore, the proprietor, severely reprimanded 
her for thus " meddling " with affairs of govern- 
ment, but the Assembly gallantly rallied to her 
support. Said they, in a joint letter to the an- 
gry proprietor: 

" As for Mrs. Brent's undertaking and med- 
dling with your Lordship's estate here. ... we 
do verily believe and in conscience report that 
it was better, for the colony's safety at that 
time, in her hands than in any man's else in 
the whole province after your brother's death. 
[261 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

For the soldiers would never have treated any 
other with that civility and respect, and though 
they were even ready at several times to run 
into mutiny yet she still pacified them, till at 
the last things were brought to that strait 
that she must be admitted and declared your 
Lordship's attorney by an order of court (the 
copy whereof is herewith enclosed) or else all 
must go to ruin again, and then the second 
mischief had been doubtless far greater than 
the former. So that if there hath not been any 
sinister use made of your Lordship's estate 
by her from what it was intimated and engaged 
for by Mr. Calvert before his death — as 
we verily believe she hath not — then we con- 
ceive from that time she rather deserved favor 
and thanks from your Honor for her so much 
concurring to the public safety than to be 
justly liable to all those bitter invectives 
you have been pleased to express against 
her." 1 

1 " Archives of Maryland," vol. i, pp. 238-239. 

[27] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

The assemblymen themselves frowned upon 
her, however, when she appeared before them 
one day and insisted that, as " his lordship's 
attorney," she be given vote and voice in the 
House. As the report of the proceedings puts 
it, in the quaint phraseology of the time: 
" The Governor denied that the said Mrs. 
Brent should have any vote in the House. And 
the said Mrs. Brent protested against all pro- 
ceedings in this present Assembly unless she 
be present and have vote aforesaid." After 
which, having spoken her mind, " the said 
Mrs. Brent " turned on her heel, left the as- 
tounded legislators staring after her, and walked 
out to resume the management of her extensive 
interests. 

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson of Boston was another 
fervent advocate of woman's rights. She has, 
for that matter, been called the first American 
club- woman. But her chief claim to fame rests 
on the fact that she was the forerunner of an 
illustrious line of American women to champion 
[281 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

actively the great cause of freedom of thought 
and speech. 

America, it should be remembered, was not 
always a land of liberty. Though its early 
settlers were in the main refugees from bigotry 
and oppression, they did not as a rule bring 
with them any lively desire to extend to others 
the toleration which they themselves had been 
unable to find in the Old World. Rather, they 
frequently made life most unhappy to any who 
chanced to differ from them in religious and 
political convictions. 

This was particularly true of Massachusetts, 
where the civil and ecclesiastical authorities 
joined hands to build up a governmental machine 
of the most despotic character. Fortunately, 
the machine had hardly got well in motion 
before champions of liberty arose to oppose it 
and to sow in Massachusetts the seeds which 
were to give such a wonderful harvest to future 
generations. Prominent among the earliest 
of these champions of liberty was Mrs. Hutchin- 
[291 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

son, who settled at Boston with her husband in 
1634. 

From the first she was recognized as an 
uncommonly gifted woman. Even Governor 
Winthrop, who became her deadly enemy, ad- 
mitted that she was " a woman of ready wit 
and bold spirit." Other leaders of Boston so- 
ciety, including the famous Sir Henry Vane, 
were willing captives to the brilliancy of her 
intellect and the charm of her manner, and 
liked nothing better than to spend an afternoon 
at her home at the corner of School and Wash- 
ington streets. Whatever subject might be 
brought up for discussion, she was always sure 
to illumine it with original and piquant com- 
ment. But her greatest interest was in helping 
and elevating her own sex, and this eventually 
led to her undoing. 

So long as she confined herself to assisting 
women who were in want, and nursing women 
who were ill, the authorities raised no objec- 
tions. But when she began to hold weekly 
[301 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

meetings to which women alone were admitted, 
official Boston looked at her askance. It was 
rumored that theological topics of the most 
delicate nature were openly debated at these 
meetings, and that Mrs. Hutchinson was prop- 
agating most unorthodox views. 

Taking alarm, the Court determined to 
investigate her doings, and upon this a pretty 
storm developed. It was discovered that she 
did actually hold novel theological opinions; 
but it was also discovered that she had gained 
a strong following, including Sir Henry Vane, 
who was then governor. An attempt to pros- 
ecute her resulted only in the formation of 
factions, which attacked one another in noisy 
controversy. 

With the defeat of Sir Henry Vane for re- 
election, and his departure for England, matters 
took a new turn. Vane's successor, Winthrop, 
was a bitter anti-Hutchinsonite, and he 
promptly placed Mrs. Hutchinson on trial 
as a person " not fit for our society." Said he, 
[31] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

in addressing her at the opening of the 
trial: 

** Mrs. Hutchinson, you are called here as 
one of those that have troubled the peace of the 
commonwealth and the churches. You are 
known to be a woman that hath had a great 
share in the promoting and divulging of those 
opinions that are causes of this trouble, and 
to be nearly joined not only in aflSnity and af- 
fection with some of those the court hath 
taken notice of and passed censure upon, but 
you have spoken divers things, as we have been 
informed, very prejudicial to the honor of the 
churches and ministers thereof; and you have 
maintained a meeting and an assembly in your 
house that hath been condemned by the 
General Assembly as a thing not tolerable 
nor comely in the sight of God, nor fitting for 
your sex; and notwithstanding that was cried 
down, you have continued the same." 

She was brought to the bar like any ordinary ■ 
criminal, and mercilessly bullied and brow- 
[321 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

beaten. She was denied counsel, and thrown 
entirely on her own defense, and from the first 
it was evident that the judges intended de- 
ciding against her. For some time she parried 
their questions skilfully, but at last she was 
trapped into some damaging admissions, 
and sentence of banishment was at once 
passed. 

Accompanied by her faithful husband, the 
unfortunate woman sought a new home in 
tolerant Rhode Island; whence, after her 
husband's death, she removed to a frontier 
settlement in New York, not far from New 
Rochelle. There she perished in an Indian 
massacre. It is said that the news of her fate 
was received with grim satisfaction by her 
persecutors. As the implacable Winthrop 
phrased it, they felt that she had met the 
just vengeance of God. 

But there were women who suffered even 
more severely in behalf of freedom of thought 
and speech than did Mrs. Hutchinson. In 
[33] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

1656 two Quakers, Ann Austin and Mary 
Fisher, were seized upon their arrival in Boston, 
thrown into prison, starved, stripped naked 
and searched for witch-marks, and finally 
shipped to Barbadoes. They were the first 
representatives in Massachusetts of a sect 
which claimed liberty of conscience as an in- 
alienable right of the human race. The cruelty 
of the reception given them did not deter others 
from following their example, and before long 
there was a veritable invasion of apostles of 
toleration. Converts multiplied all through 
the colony, while the authorities stood aghast^ 
rightly believing that if the Quaker ideas 
prevailed, they would no longer be able to rule 
with the iron hand of absolutism. Accordingly, 
they enacted a series of drastic laws, culmina- 
ting in one decreeing the death penalty to any 
Quaker who, having once been banished, 
should venture again into Massachusetts. 

Among the stanchest supporters of Mrs. 
Hutchinson had been a young Boston matron 
[341 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

named Mary Dyer and her husband, William 
Dyer. When the Hutchinsons took refuge in 
Rhode Island, the Dyers followed them, set- 
tling at Newport, where they soon became people 
of consequence. Some years later Mrs. Dyer, 
who is reported to have been of a " wonderful 
sweet and pleasant discourse, having a pier- 
cing knowledge in many things," made a long 
visit in England. While there she became a 
convert to Quakerism, and on returning to 
America by way of Boston was thrown into 
prison for this heinous crime. In vain she ex- 
plained to the Boston magistrates that she 
was simply passing through Massachusetts. 
They would not release her until her husband, 
who was not a Quaker, arrived from Rhode 
Island and promised to take her home and allow 
her to speak to no one until the Massachusetts 
boundary had been reached. 

This was in 1657. Two years later she was 
found visiting some Quaker prisoners in Boston, 
and this time she was formally banished with a 
[35] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

warning that did she return the hanging law 
would be enforced against her. 

" That is a cruel law," said she, " and ought 
to be repealed." 

Within a month she was back in Boston to 
demand fair treatment for the Quakers, two 
of whom were lying under sentence of death. 
Her own imprisonment quickly followed, and 
then came a short and speedy trial. 

" Mary Dyer," Governor Endicott told her 
sternly, " you shall go hence to the place from 
whence you came, and from thence to the place 
of execution, and there be hanged until you be 
dead." 

" The will of the Lord be done," was all she 
said. " Yea, and joyfully I go." 

In the interval between her condemnation 
and the day set for her execution she main- 
tained the same spirit of calm fortitude, and 
spent part of her time in writing an " Appeal 
to the General Court in Boston " for the re- 
mission not of the death sentence passed on 
[361 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

her but of that previously passed on her two 
fellow-sufferers. This document may well be 
quoted in part, both because of its historical 
importance and because of the impressive light 
it throws on the beautiful character of hapless 
Mary Dyer. 

" Whereas," it began, " I am by many charged 
with the guiltiness of my own blood; if you 
mean, in my coming to Boston, I am therein 
clear and justified by the Lord, in whose will 
I came, who will require my blood of you, be 
sure, who have made a law to take away the 
lives of the innocent servants of God, if they 
come among you, who are called by you, 
'Cursed Quakers;' altho' I say — and am a 
living witness for them and the Lord — that 
He hath blessed them, and sent them unto 
you. Therefore be not found fighters against 
God, but let my counsel and request be ac- 
cepted with you, to repeal all such laws, that 
the Truth and servants of the Lord may have 
free passage among you, and you be kept from 
[37] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

shedding innocent blood, which I know there 
are many among you would not do, if they knew 
it so to be. Nor can the Enemy that stirreth 
you up thus to destroy this Holy Seed, in any 
measure countervail the great damage that 
you will by thus doing procure. Therefore, 
seeing the Lord hath not hid it from me, it 
lyeth upon me, in love to your souls, thus to 
persuade you. 

" I have no self -ends, the Lord knoweth, for 
if my life were freely granted by you, it would 
not avail me, nor could I accept it of you, so 
long as I should daily hear or see the sufferings 
of these people, my dear Brethren and Seed, with 
whom my life is bound up, as I have done these 
two years. . . . Wo is me for you! Of whom 
take you counsel? Search with the Light of 
Christ in ye, and it will show you of whom, as 
it hath done me and many more, who have been 
disobedient and deceived, as now you are; 
which Light, as you come into, and obeying 
what is made manifest to you therein, you will 
[381 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

not repent that you were kept from shedding 
blood, tho* it were by a woman. It's not mine 
own life I seek (for I chuse rather to suffer with 
the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures 
of Egypt) but the life of the Seed, which I 
know the Lord hath blessed; and therefore 
seeks the Enemy thus vehemently the life 
thereof to destroy, as in all ages he ever did. 

" Oh, hearken not unto him, I beseech you, 
for the Seed's sake, which is one in all, and is 
dear in the sight of God; which they that 
touch, touch the apple of His eye, and cannot 
escape his wrath. ... In love and in the 
spirit of meekness I again beseech you, for I 
have no enmity to the persons of any; but you 
shall know that God will not be mocked, but 
what you sow that shall you reap from Him, 
that will render to everyone according to the 
deeds done in the body, whether good or evil." ^ 

The influence of this appeal on those to 

1 George Bishop's " New England Judged by the Spirit 
of the Lord," pp. 288-292. 

[39] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

whom it was addressed was absolutely nil. 
But public opinion was fast becoming aroused 
by the persecution of the Quakers, and even 
the bigoted Endicott shrank from executing 
the death sentence against a woman. With a 
refinement of cruelty, however, it was resolved 
to reprieve Mrs. Dyer only at the last moment. 

Under a strong military guard, detailed lest 
a rescue might be attempted, she and the two 
men previously sentenced were taken to Boston 
Common, where the gallows had been erected. 
One after the other her companions were ex- 
ecuted before her eyes; the rope was adjusted 
to her neck, and she began to ascend the fatal 
ladder. Then, and not till then, was she told 
that it was not intended she should die. 

Carried back to jail, she learned that the 
reprieve was contingent on her consenting to 
leave Massachusetts and promising to stay 
out of it. In simple but eloquent language she 
refused. 

" My life," said she, " is not accepted, 
[401 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

neither availeth me, in comparison with the 
lives and liberty of the Truth and servants of 
the living God, for which in the bowels of love 
and meekness I sought you; yet nevertheless, 
with wicked hands have you put two of them 
to death, which makes me to feel that the 
mercies of the wicked is cruelty. I rather 
chuse to dye than to live, as from you, as guilty 
of their innocent blood." ^ 

Now, however, the authorities had only 
the one thought of getting her off their hands. 
Despite her protests she was hurried from Boston 
and escorted into Rhode Island. 

For a few months nothing more was heard 
from her. Then, having definitely made up 
her mind that it was the Lord's will she should 
combat even unto death the cruel persecution 
of her fellow-religionists, she once more came 
to Boston, once more was arrested, and once 
more sentenced to die. This time, Endicott 
assured her, the sentence would be carried out. 
1 Bishop's " New England," p. 311. 

[41] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

" Listen, then," said she, " I came in obedi- 
ence to the will of God the last General Court, 
desiring thee to repeal thy unrighteous laws 
of banishment on pain of death; and that same 
is my work now and earnest request." 

" Away with her, away with her," com- 
manded Endicott. 

Again, as she stood at the foot of the ladder, 
she was told that she might yet save herself 
by promising to go home and to remain there. 

" Nay, I cannot. For in obedience to the 
will of the Lord I came, and in His will I abide 
faithful to the death." 

Without a tremor she stepped up the ladder, 
rung by rung. A great hush among the crowd, 
a quick motion of the executioner's hand, and 
her last moment had come. 

It is many a day since Mary Dyer, martyr 
of liberty, met her doom on Boston Common — 
many a day since Anne Hutchinson, Margaret 
Brent, Hannah Duston, Mary Rowlandson, 
and all other of the worthy women of early 
[421 



IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING 

America passed across the stage of life. But 
the lessons they taught and the works they 
wrought have never ceased to influence for 
good the heart and thought of the nation. 



[43] 



CHAPTER II 

LATER COLONIAL BELLES AND HOUSEWIVES 

THERE is no period in the history of the 
United States about which so Httle is 
known as the first half of the eighteenth century. 
Until quite recently the general historian has 
never pretended to describe it in detail, but 
has passed rapidly from the picturesque and 
romantic time of the founding to the impress- 
ive era of the Revolution. Yet, as modern in- 
vestigators are beginning to make very clear, it 
is a period of vital interest and significance. 
It witnessed a really remarkable cultural and 
intellectual development — a breaking away 
from the crudities and austerities of the early 
colonization, and the upbuilding of a social 
structure which foreshadowed the distinctive 
traits of American society to-day. 
[441 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

Politically, it was marked by many occur- 
rences and movements of profound importance 
when viewed in the light of later events. On 
the economic side, conspicuous changes took 
place, chief among which was the extension 
of the area of cultivation and settlement from 
the coastal country to the edge of the rock- 
rimmed Mississippi Basin. In a word, the so- 
called forgotten half-century was a period of 
preparation, a period wherein the road was 
cleared for the advent of the mighty nation 
of the future. And just as she had played a 
striking part in the foundation-laying of the 
previous century, so did the American woman 
contribute in many and various ways to this 
clearing of the road. 

Not the least of her contributions, and cer- 
tainly the most fascinating to her latter-day 
descendants who fondly piece together the 
scattered records of her doings, is the insistence 
with which she emphasized the lighter side of 
life. Protest though they might, and did, 
[451 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

such frowning citadels of asceticism as Boston 
and Philadelphia were forced to follow the lead 
of more liberal communities and surrender to 
her demand for gaiety and entertainment. 

In all the larger centers of population bright 
raiment replaced the sober garb of former times. 
As early as 1704 a traveler recorded that the 
Englishwomen of New York " go very fashion- 
able in their dress," while the Dutchwomen 
" set out their ears with jewels of a large size 
and many in number." . 

The century was still young when the tin- 
kling spinet, that curious forerunner of our 
modern piano, made its way across the Atlantic 
and into the homes of the well-to-do. By 1712 
teachers of spinet-playing found it profitable 
to follow their profession even in the stanchest 
stronghold of Puritanism, and not many years 
afterward dancing-masters boldly advertised 
for patrons in the city of William Penn. In- 
deed, the famous Philadelphia Dancing Assem- 
bly was founded as long ago as 1719, when 
[461 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

Governor Hamilton led off with the mayor's 
wife in the first dance of that historic series 
of subscription balls. Concert-going, sleigh- 
riding, tea-parties, and " turtle frolics " — 
much like the clambakes and lobster-bakes of 
to-day — were other popular diversions of 
the eighteenth century belles and beaux of the 
North. 

In Philadelphia fishing-parties constituted 
a special form of social amusement, as we learn 
from the mid-century traveler, Andrew Bur- 
naby. 

" There is," he notes, " a society of sixteen 
ladies and as many gentlemen called the Fish- 
ing Company, who meet once a fortnight upon 
the Schuylkill. They have a very pleasant 
room erected in a romantic situation upon the 
banks of that river where they generally dine 
and drink tea. There are several pretty walks 
about it, and some wild and rugged rocks 
which, together with the water and fine groves 
that adorn the banks, form a most beautiful 
[47] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

and picturesque scene. There are boats and 
fishing tackle of all sorts, and the company 
divert themselves with walking, fishing, going 
up the water, dancing, singing, conversing, or 
just as they please. The ladies wear a uniform 
and appear with great ease and advantage 
from the neatness and simplicity of it. The 
first and most distinguished people of the colony 
are of this society; and it is very advantageous 
to a stranger to be introduced to it, as he 
hereby gets acquainted with the best and most 
respectable company in Philadelphia." 

Of New York society the same observer 
records : 

" The women are handsome and agreeable, 
though rather more reserved than the Phila- 
delphia ladies. Their amusements are much 
the same as in Pennsylvania — viz, balls and 
sleighing expeditions in the winter, and in the 
summer going in parties upon the water and 
fishing; or making excursions into the country. 
There are several houses pleasantly situated 
[48] 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

upon East River, near New York, where it 
is common to have turtle feasts; these happen 
once or twice in a week. Thirty or forty gentle- 
men and ladies meet and dine together, drink 
tea in the afternoon, fish and amuse themselves 
till evening, and then return home in Italian 
chaises, a gentleman and lady in each chaise." 

Another traveler of the same period gives 
us this contrasting view of the amusements 
of the social leaders of Boston, where dancing 
and similar forms of recreation made headway 
slowly : 

" For their domestic amusements every after- 
noon after drinking tea, the gentlemen and 
ladies walk the Mall, and from there adjourn 
to one another's house to spend the evening, 
those that are not disposed to attend the evening 
lecture, which they may do if they please six 
nights in the seven the year round. What they 
call the Mall is a walk on a fine green common 
adjoining to the south-east side of the town. 
The government being in the hands of dissenters 
[491 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

they don't admit of plays or music houses; 
but of late they have set up an assembly to 
which some of the ladies resort. But they are 
looked upon to be none of the nicest, in regard 
to their reputation, and it is thought it will be 
soon suppressed, for it is much taken notice of 
and exploded by the religious and other part 
of the people. But notwithstanding plays and 
such like diversions do not obtain here, they 
don't be dispirited or moped for the want of 
them, for both the ladies and gentlemen dress 
and appear as gay in common as courtiers 
in England on a coronation or birthday." 

In the South, where the people were settled 
on vast plantations rather than in compact 
communities, there was not such frequent op- 
portunity for intercourse. But, once the first 
difficulties of colonization were overcome, a 
brilliant social life speedily developed. As 
in the North, dancing was a favorite recreation, 
both on the plantations and in the towns. 
So, too, was card-playing, as we are reminded 
[501 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

by William Black's all-too-brief description 
of a government ball which he attended at 
Annapolis in 1744. It was held in the council- 
chamber, and Black reports that in a back 
room " those that was not engaged in any 
dancing match might better employ them- 
selves at cards, dice, backgammon, or with a 
cheerful glass." 

The planters when at home kept open house, 
dispensing hospitality with a lavish hand, 
while their wives and daughters, in silks and 
satins and brocades, greeted the coming and 
sped the parting guest with all the graciousness 
of a cultured womanhood. Weddings were 
made the occasion of prolonged and notable 
festivities, and race-meets early became a 
feature of Southern life, especially in the Old 
Dominion. 

All this, of course, was bitterly denounced 
by the severer type of moralists, who rightly 
held the women of the colonies chiefly respon- 
sible for the revolt against the former order 
[51] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

of things. But, as we of the present can see 
clearly enough, the change was for the better. 
It meant the creation of an atmosphere of 
refinement and moral and intellectual freedom. 
It encouraged the growth of cheerfulness and 
contentment in a country where life was still 
in many ways hard and savage and depressing. 
Thus it was an important element in preparing 
and equipping the people for the great struggle 
that was to be the paramount fact of the second 
half of the century. In fact, it was directly 
productive of leadership for that struggle, as 
is shown by the number of Revolutionary he- 
roes born of mothers who delighted in manners 
and customs at which even to-day the puritan- 
ically minded look askance. 

Let us make no mistake. The Puritan point 
of view was, and is, of the greatest value to the 
Republic. But so is the capacity for enjoying 
the little things of life, so long as it does not de- 
generate into mere frivolity. And the eighteenth 
century girls and matrons, who glided through 
[52] 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

the graceful minuet, went gaily on sleigh-rides 
and turtle frolics, or cheered the victory of 
some favorite horse, were assuredly not frivolous. 
It needs only a hasty reading of contempo- 
rary letters and memoirs, our main reliance for 
the social history of the period, to appreciate 
their essential earnestness and seriousness. 
They were the best of housewives, and almost 
invariably superintended in person the prep- 
aration of the dainty dishes set forth at wedding- 
feast and dance-supper. The beautiful gar- 
ments in which they look down at us from the 
pictured canvas on the wall, were often fash- 
ioned by their own hands. If, as in the South 
and on the forgotten plantations of Rhode 
Island, they were the mistresses of noble man- 
sions and of a small army of dependents, they 
keenly appreciated the duties as well as the 
privileges which this entailed. They cheerfully 
looked after the manifold affairs of household 
management, taught their servants and slaves 
the domestic sciences, and were untiring in 
[531 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

works of charity. To their children they were 
always the best of mothers. 

Nothing can illustrate more clearly the spirit 
prevailing among the women who moved in 
the " fashionable " circles of eighteenth century 
America than the story of Eliza Lucas Pinck- 
ney, the mother of Thomas and Charles Cotes- 
worth Pinckney of Revolutionary renown. 

Mrs. Pinckney ^ was the daughter of Colonel 
George Lucas, an English officer who, about 
1738, settled near Charleston in one of those 
magnificent South Carolina plantation homes 
of which Drayton Hall is a surviving example. 
He had hoped to pass his days in peaceful and 
prosperous retirement, but when war broke 
out between England and Spain he was ordered 
on active service, and was obliged to sail hur- 
riedly for the West Indies, leaving his young 
daughter in charge of his Carolina interests. 

1 The life story of Mrs. Pinckney is told in detail by Mrs. 
H. H. Ravenel in "Eliza Pinckney," an admirable little 
biography. 

[54] 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

Although not more than sixteen or seventeen 
years old, and of a lively and fun-loving dis- 
position, the little Eliza rose splendidly to the 
occasion. A letter written to a friend not long 
after her father's departure gives a vivid 
glimpse of the way in which she appreciated 
the responsibility thrust upon her. 

" I have a little library," she writes, " in 
which I spend part of my time. My music and 
the garden, which I am very fond of, take up 
the rest that is not employed in business, of 
which my father has left me a pretty good 
share; and indeed 'twas unavoidable, as my 
mama's bad state of health prevents her going 
thro' any fatigue. I have the business of three 
plantations to transact, which requires much 
writing and more business and fatigue of other 
sorts than you can imagine. But lest you 
should imagine it to be burdensome to a girl 
at my early time of life, give me leave to assure 
you that I think myself happy that I can be 
useful to so good a father." 
[55] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

Any hope that Colonel Lucas would soon 
return to America was dispelled by his ap- 
pointment as governor of Antigua, and the 
temporary stewardship which his daughter had 
so cheerfully undertaken thus became a stew- 
ardship of years. But instead of complaining 
or shirking her duties, she enthusiastically gave 
herself ^to the task of developing the plantations 
along not merely profitable but also novel 
lines, embarking on a series of agricultural 
experiments unlike any formerly attempted 
in South Carolina. At her request, her father 
sent her the seeds of indigo, ginger, and other 
tropical plants, which she cultivated with 
remarkable success. Moreover, she freely 
distributed seed to other planters who wished 
to carry on similar experiments, and in this 
way she actually became the founder of a new 
agricultural regime, the cultivation of indigo 
for export proving so remunerative that it was 
soon a staple product of the South. 

The growing of flax and hemp, and, at a 
[561 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

later period, the development of a silk industry, 
were other activities of the tireless IViiss Lucas. 
And that she was not only extremely diligent 
but exceedingly far-sighted is strikingly evi- 
denced by the fact that she laid out an entire 
plantation in oaks, in anticipation of the time 
when the colonies would need more ships and 
would turn to ship-building themselves. 

Thus her days were spent largely in the open, 
and in occupations usually left to men. But, 
as her correspondence proves, she lost none of 
her early fondness for books and music. Her 
letters also abound in references to " festal 
days " at Drayton Hall, and other of the man- 
sions on the Ashley. She was a frequent vis- 
itor to Charleston, and always a welcome guest 
in the town houses of such social leaders as the 
Middletons and the Pinckneys. 

It was there that she made the acquaintance 

of her future husband. Chief Justice Pinckney, 

whose sudden death in 1758 left her a widow 

at the early age of thirty-six, with three small 

[571 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

children to care for, and several plantations 
to manage. As in her girlhood, she showed her- 
self equal to the emergency. Even while still 
" bitterly oppressed with grief " she began to 
plan for the future of her little ones, and just 
as she had labored for her father's interests, 
so now she labored for theirs. Not until her 
sons had grown to manhood did her vigilance 
and diligence relax. 

Passing imperceptibly into a gentle old age, 
she still made her influence felt. And when she 
died — nearly twenty years after the American 
colonies had become a free and independent 
nation — wide was the circle that mourned her 
loss. Washington, we are told, and it is pleas- 
ant to believe, paid his tribute to this noble 
American mother by begging to be one of those 
who should have the privilege of bearing her 
to her last resting-place. 

In every colony were to be found women like 
Eliza Lucas Pinckney — possessed of the ad- 
vantages of wealth and position, ardent, light- 
[581 



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LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

hearted, high-spirited, but right-minded and 
earnest and brave. They were women of 
fine ideals and fine achievement. Even when 
their dreams did not come true, when fate was 
adverse to them, they left traditions that have 
powerfully, however unconsciously, influenced 
the thought and conduct of posterity. 

I am reminded of the tragic tale of Hannah 
Robinson,^ which I heard for the first time in 
the shadow of her old home overlooking the 
waters of Narragansett Bay. She was the 
daughter of a typical Rhode Island planter, 
Rowland Robinson, whose ample acres in- 
cluded much of the country round about the 
present village of Saunderstown. It was, like 
the South, a region of vast estates, landed 
gentry, and slave labor. To-day it has to a 
considerable extent relapsed into wilderness, 
but at that time it was the scene of a picturesque 

1 This account follows the version given in W. Updike's 
" History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett " (edition 
of 1847). 

[591 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

social activity, with a constant coming and 
going between the plantations, and an 
abundance of hunting, feasting, and dan- 
cing. 

Into this gay life Hannah Robinson was intro- 
duced at an early age, to be instantly acclaimed 
the reigning belle of Narragansett, and be- 
sieged by a throng of eager suitors. Her father, 
who had set his heart on marrying her into 
one of the great families of the neighborhood, 
saw with delight the popularity of his beautiful 
and talented daughter, and spared no pains 
to impress on her the desirability of making 
a brilliant match. It then developed, to his 
horrified amazement, that she had already 
secretly plighted her troth to a young and ob- 
scure Newport man named Simons, whom she 
had met at a dancing-school. 

" Look you, father," said she, calmly, in 

answer to his torrent of furious protestation, 

** you need not storm. He may not be a rich 

man, but he is a good man, and nothing will 

[60] 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

induce me to break the vow I have taken, 
or to betray the faith he has placed in 
me. 

Then began a bitter persecution. Deter- 
mined that she should neither see nor com- 
municate with her lover, the irate Rowland 
Robinson kept a constant watch on his daughter. 
If she took a walk or a ride, a slave was sent 
to follow her. Did she wish to visit friends, 
permission was given only after it had been 
made absolutely certain that Simons would 
have no opportunity of meeting her. 

Once, the story goes, after she had started 
on a journey to New London, her father chanced 
to spy from an upper window a vessel sailing 
from Newport. Though he had no knowledge 
of its destination, he immediately imagined 
that it was bound for New London, and that 
Simons was one of its passengers. Rushing 
down-stairs, he called for a horse, galloped 
post-haste after his daughter, and compelled 
her instant return. 

161] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

For all of this, the lovers managed to outwit 
him, sometimes meeting even on the Robinson 
grounds, and renewing their pledges in the 
peaceful shelter of the dense shrubbery about 
the house. And, so soon as the long strain 
began to tell on the fair Hannah's health, they 
found allies among her relatives, particularly 
in an uncle. Colonel Gardiner, who bluntly 
informed Rowland Robinson that he had the 
option between seeing his daughter die by 
inches or allowing her to wed the man of her 
choice. But the grim old planter only squared 
his jaw, and increased the rigor of his oppo- 
sition. 

Convinced at last that she need never hope 
to gain his consent, the unhappy girl yielded 
to her sweetheart's pleadings for an elopement. 
Under the pretext of visiting an aunt at Wick- 
ford, she met him there, leaped into a carriage 
with him, and galloped off to Providence, 
while her body-servant looked on aghast, para- 
lyzed by the thought of the reception awaiting 
[62] 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

him when he returned to the Robinson house 
without his mistress. 

As they drove madly along the Providence 
road that pleasant afternoon, the lovers doubt- 
less planned the good old-fashioned ending to 
their romance. But fortune had decreed other- 
wise. At news of the elopement and subse- 
quent marriage, which took place that same 
evening, Rowland Robinson was seized with 
an insane fury, vowed never to forgive his 
daughter, and threatened Simons with a fearful 
vengeance. 

Given a timely warning, the young couple 
went into hiding, and for a few brief months 
enjoyed the happiness of which they had 
dreamed. Then, worn out by prolonged anx- 
iety and grief at her father's bitter attitude, 
the winsome Hannah fell a victim to the dread 
malady of the hectic flush and the racking 
cough — that terrible scourge of modern civil- 
ization. Day by day she grew weaker, and as 
the disease progressed she begged pitifully 
[63] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

to be allowed to die in the home of her child- 
hood. 

Only when it was too late, did old Rowland 
relent. On a litter borne by four weeping 
slaves she was carried back to the beautiful 
Narragansett country, to take a last fond look 
at its well-remembered scenes, and in a little 
while to find repose amid its verdant fields. 

This was many, many years ago, but even 
to-day the sturdy farmers and weather-beaten 
fisherf oik, who dwell in the land of the vanished 
planters, cherish the memory of the " unfortu- 
nate Hannah Robinson." From generation 
to generation they have handed her history 
down, as the precious and inspiring record of 
one who cheerfully sacrificed life itself for the 
sake of love.^ 

^ It is only fair to say that there is another version of the 
story, and one far more favorable to Rowland Robinson. 
According to this account, the latter was justified in his op- 
position to the marriage, as Simons was a worthless scamp, 
whose treatment of her broke his wife's heart. And her 
father, instead of refusing to receive her, went to her so soon 
as he learned of her desperate condition, and brought her 
home, where she died the night after her return. 

[64] 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

Of course, there were other phases in the 
history of the forgotten half-century than those 
which I have described. If it was a period in 
which the advantages that go with wealth be- 
gan to make themselves felt, it was also a period 
of difficulty, struggle, and hardship. As in the 
time of the founding, there was a constant 
pioneering movement, a perpetual advance into 
the wilderness. In this not only the English 
but colonists of many nationalities took part — 
men and women who, like the Pilgrims and 
Puritans before them, were refugees from re- 
ligious and political oppression. Huguenots 
from France, Palatines from Germany, High- 
landers from Scotland, and Scotch-Irish by 
the thousand, united to swell the steadily 
rising tide of immigration. 

Coming for precisely the same object that 
had actuated the English pioneers of the seven- 
teenth century — to make permanent homes 
for themselves in the New World — the later 
arrivals boldly struck into the unoccupied 
[65] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

lands of the interior, planting their settlements 
chiefly in the foot-hill region of the Alleghanies, 
then known as the " back country " of Pennsyl- 
vania, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. 
It was the beginning — though none realized 
it at the time — of that westward movement 
which was eventually to carry the American 
people to the shores of the Pacific; and, as 
in the case of each successive forward step, 
it was attended by many dangers and difficul- 
ties. 

What it meant to the home-seekers them- 
selves — the discomforts they underwent, the 
perils imaginary and real by which their cour- 
age was tried — is well exhibited in an account 
written by Robert Wither spoon, who emi- 
grated from Ireland with his father's family 
in 1734 and settled in inland South Carolina, 
where some relatives had preceded them two 
years earlier. After describing the hardships 
of the trans-Atlantic voyage, which was more 
then two months in duration, owing to severe 
[661 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

storms and the general unseaworthiness of 
their ship, Wither spoon relates: 

" We landed in Charleston three weeks be- 
fore Christmas, and found the inhabitants 
very kind. We staid in town until after Christ- 
mas, and were then put on board of an open 
boat, with tools and a year's provisions. . . . 
The provisions were Indian corn, rice, wheaten 
flour, beef, pork, rum, and salt. We were much 
distressed in this part of our passage. As it was 
the dead of winter, we were exposed to the 
inclemency of the weather day and night; 
and (which added to the grief of all pious 
persons on board) the atheistical and blas- 
phemous mouths of our patroons and the other 
hands. They brought us up as far as Potatoe 
Ferry and turned us on shore, where we lay 
in Samuel Commander's barn for some time, 
and the boat wrought her way up to the ' King's 
Tree ' with the goods and provisions, which is 
the first boat that I believe ever came up so 
high before. 

[67] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

" While we lay at Mr. Commander's our 
men came up in order to get dirt houses 
to take their families to. . . . What help 
they could get from the few inhabitants in 
order to carry the children and other neces- 
saries up they availed themselves of. As the 
woods were full of water, and most severe 
frosts, it was very severe on women and chil- 
dren. . . . When we came to the BlufiF, my 
mother and we children were still in expecta- 
tion that we were coming to an agreeable 
place. But when we arrived and saw nothing 
but a wilderness, and instead of a fine timbered 
house nothing but a mere dirt house, our spirits 
quite sank; and what added to our trouble 
our pilot left us when we came in sight of the 
place. 

" My father gave us all the comfort he could 
by telling us we could get all those trees cut 
down, and in a short time there would be plenty 
of inhabitants, so that we could see from house 
to house. While we were at this, our fire we 
[68] 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

brought from Bog Swamp went out. Father 
had heard that up the river swamp was the 
' King's Tree.' Although there was no path, 
neither did he know the distance, yet he fol- 
lowed up the swamp until he came to the branch, 
and by that found Roger Gordon's. We watched 
him as far as the trees would let us see, and 
returned to our dolorous hut, expecting never 
to see him or any human person more. But 
after some time he returned and brought fire. 
" We were soon comforted, but evening 
coming on the wolves began to howl on all 
sides. We then feared being devoured by wild 
beasts, having neither gun nor dog nor any door 
to our house. Howbeit we set to and gathered 
fuel, and made a good fire, and so passed the 
first night. The next day being a clear warm 
morning, we began to stir about, but about 
mid-day there rose a cloud southwest attended 
with a high wind, thunder and lightning. The 
rain quickly penetrated through between the 
poles and brought down the sand that covered 
[69] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

them over, which seemed to threaten to bury 
us aHve. The hghtning and claps were very 
awful and lasted a good space of time. I do 
not remember to have seen a much severer 
gust than that was. I believe we all sincerely 
wished ourselves again at Belfast. But this 
fright was soon over, and the evening cleared 
up, comfortable and warm. 

" The boat that brought up the goods 
arrived at the ' King's Tree.' People were 
much oppressed in bringing their things, as 
there was no horse there. They were obliged 
to toil hard, and had no other way but to 
convey their beds, clothing, chests, provi- 
sions, tools, pots, etc., on their backs. And 
at that time there were few or no roads, 
and every family had to travel the best way 
they could. . . . We had a great deal of trouble 
and hardships in our settling, but the few in- 
habitants continued still in health and strength. 
Yet we were oppressed with fears on divers 
accounts, especially of being massacred by the 
[701 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

Indians, or bitten by snakes, or torn by wild 
beasts, or being lost and perishing in the woods. 
Of this last calamity there were three in- 
stances." ^ 

From the first this migration into the dense, 
untraveled wastes of the Alleghany foot-hills 
bred a race of heroes — and of heroines. Cour- 
age, self-reliance, and the spirit of initiative 
were by no means confined to the men who 
in those painful years of the mid-eighteenth 
century conquered the forests and invaded 
the mountains. Frenchwoman and German, 
Scotchwoman and Irish lass, all played a won- 
derful role. Often they set brilliant examples 
of individual courage and hardihood. 

Thus, Christine Zellers, the wife of a German 
immigrant who, in 1745, settled near Lebanon 
in Pennsylvania, is credited with having planned 
and superintended the construction of a fort, 
or " house of refuge," built to protect the col- 

^ C. A, Hanna's " The Scotch-Irish in America," vol. ii, 
pp. 26-28. 

[71] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

onists of the vicinity. She is also the heroine 
of a piquant tale of Indian adventure. 

One day, when the settlers were at work in 
the fields, the fort was raided by a band of red 
men, who fancied that it was unoccupied 
and that they could plunder it at their leisure. 
Mrs. Zellers was quite alone at the time, but 
instead of calling for help, she calmly picked 
up an ax and awaited the entrance of the in- 
truders. Luckily for her, instead of attempting 
to break through the door, which was stoutly 
bolted, they decided to climb in by an open 
window. The first to show himself was felled 
with a blow that brought instant death. A 
second was served in like fashion, and so was 
a third. Believing that the fort was strongly 
garrisoned after all, the rest now fled in terror, 
leaving the victorious Mrs. Zellers at liberty 
to throw down her blood-stained ax and return 
to the household duties which their coming 
had interrupted. 

The Indian was, indeed, a still greater menace 
[721 




OLD INDIAN FORT NEAR NEWMANSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA. 
Page 72. 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

to the settlers of the inland hills and valleys 
than he had been to the early colonists of the 
tide- water region. And for the reason that, be- 
ginning in 1689 and continuing more than sev- 
enty years, he was systematically incited to 
attack by the authorities of New France, who 
rightly feared that, unless checked, the people 
of the English colonies would in time overflow 
into the fertile Mississippi Valley, to which 
the French laid claim. 

Throughout the forgotten half-century, and 
even after the conquest of Canada, the Ameri- 
can border north and south was harried by 
Indian war-parties. It is impossible to say 
how many lives were sacrificed in this cruel 
conflict, how many peaceful settlements blotted 
out. But it is certain that, for all his cunning 
and savagery, the red man was unable to terror- 
ize the people of the frontier into abandoning 
their foothold in the wilderness. 

When the storm was most severe, the colo- 
nists might, it is true, bend before it, and seek 
[73] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

refuge among the more populous settlements 
nearer the sea. But always they returned to 
rebuild their ruined homes, and assume once 
more their task of extending the limits of civil- 
ization. Always they mocked at the buffetings 
of fate, and faced the future with sublime hope 
and confidence. 

True of the men, this was fully as true of 
the women. There are many narratives that 
might be told to illustrate their unfailing op- 
timism under the most discouraging circum- 
stances. 

As impressive as any is the tale of Mrs. 
Hannah Dennis's escape from captivity among 
the Ohio Indians.^ In its way, her achievement 
was no less remarkable than that of the more 
celebrated Mrs. Hannah Duston of early days. 
Mrs. Dennis was the wife of Joseph Dennis, 
a settler who came to Virginia about the middle 
of the eighteenth century, and built a home 

1 A. S. Withers's " Chronicles of Border Warfare " (Edi- 
tion of 1831). 

[74] 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

in the beautiful but at that time sparsely 
settled region around the headwaters of the 
James River. Hither, shortly before the sign- 
ing of the treaty which brought to a close the 
long war between the English colonists and 
the French and their Indian allies, came a 
band of Shawnees, who passed with great ra- 
pidity from farm to farm, and left behind them 
a trail of blood and ashes. 

The Dennis homestead was among those 
ravaged, Mr. Dennis and their only child 
being slain, and Mrs. Dennis taken prisoner 
and forced to accompany the Indians on the 
hard journey to their distant village in Ohio. 
From the first her mind was busy plotting 
means of escape, but she soon realized that 
escape would be impossible unless she found 
a way of inducing the Indians to relax the 
vigilant watch they kept over her. 

To this end, she pretended that she had lost 
all desire to rejoin her kindred across the moun- 
tains. She learned the Indian language, dressed 
[75] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

in Indian garb, and painted herself like any 
squaw. Still her captors remained suspicious. 
She then resolved to work on their superstitious 
terrors, and one day proclaimed that she had 
acquired magical powers and could heal the 
sick. A few lucky cures, brought about by the 
use of simple herbs, worked a complete change 
in the attitude of the Indians. They no longer 
kept her under a close guard, but permitted her 
to roam at will, in search of the herbs which 
she told them were essential for her " incan- 
tations." 

At first, fearing that they might be secretly 
spying on her, Mrs. Dennis was careful to re- 
turn to the village every evening. But at 
last, nearly two years after her captivity had 
begun, she felt satisfied that she had completely 
lulled suspicion, and that the time had come 
to make her bid for freedom. 

One beautiful June morning she left the village 
as usual, waving a gay farewell to its inhab- 
itants. Between her and " home " stretched 
[761 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

hundreds of miles of wilderness. Pursuit, she 
knew, would be swift and certain; and she 
was confronted besides with the risk of death 
in many forms. Yet she did not for an instant 
lose hope. 

With a cunning born of long contact with 
the savages, her first care was to " break " her 
trail as much as possible; and for this purpose 
she three times crossed the Scioto River, on 
which the Indian village was located. 

Early in the morning of the next day, when 
she was about to cross the river for the fourth 
time, she heard exultant shouts on the other 
side, and, looking up, saw a group of warriors 
awaiting her. As she turned to flee, she slipped 
on a stone and fell, cutting her foot badly; 
at the same moment the Indians fired, but not 
a bullet so much as grazed her. Plunging into 
the undergrowth, her quick eye espied a huge, 
hollow sycamore, and into this she hastily 
crawled. For hours her pursuers searched 
through the surrounding forest, and, as she 
[77] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

afterward related, were often within touching 
distance of her. Finally, satisfied that she had 
eluded them, they gave over the hunt and 
started for the Ohio, thinking to intercept 
her when she reached its banks. 

For three days Mrs. Dennis remained hidden 
in the sycamore, coming out only to seek food 
and dress her wounded foot. Then, already 
greatly exhausted but courageous and hopeful 
as ever, she once more started on her flight. 
Traveling only at night, she reached the Ohio 
in safety, and succeeded in crossing it with the 
aid of a log of driftwood. 

Thereafter she had comparatively little fear 
of recapture by the Indians, but she still had 
to cope with many perils, of whicli starvation 
was not the least, as she had been able to bring 
no supplies with her. Herbs, roots, green 
grapes, wild cherries — such was the food on 
which she lived for almost three weeks, and 
not merely lived but contrived to make head- 
way in her long pilgrimage. Always, however, 
[781 



LATER COLONIAL BELLES 

her steps grew more feeble; but always she 
struggled on, confident that she would reach 
her journey's end. 

And her confidence was not misplaced. 
Dragging herself wearily along, a pitiful shadow 
of the sturdy woman who had so bravely set 
out from the Indian village in the far-away 
Ohio country, she one morning heard the wel- 
come sound of English voices. It was a party 
of settlers who had gone into the wilderness to 
hunt. Joyfully she called to them, and tenderly 
they cared for her when they heard her pathetic 
story. A little later and, strengthened and re- 
freshed, she was again among friends who had 
long mourned her as dead. 

Now, Hannah Dennis was an exceptional 
woman only in so far as she proved herself 
equal to an exceptional test. All over the coun- 
try — in the cities and towns of the North, on 
the plantations of the South, and among the 
rude settlements of the far-reaching frontier — 
were women who, in their own way, were as 
[79] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

buoyant, determined, and resourceful. These 
women, of every section and every walk in 
life, were the mothers of the men who won the 
American Revolution. It is surely unnecessary 
to point out that the sons of such mothers 
could not but be good fighters. 



[80 



CHAPTER III 

THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

THE American woman of colonial times, 
as we have already seen, was conspicuous 
for many notable characteristics. She was pre- 
eminently courageous and resourceful, able 
to depend on herself and think for herself. 
Whether in the older communities along the 
Atlantic, or among the straggling settlements 
of the mountain frontier, she displayed a won- 
derful readiness in adapting herself to condi- 
tions, and in meeting emergencies. There was 
no peril which she did not face dauntlessly, 
no obstacle she deemed too great to be over- 
come. If occasion demanded, as was often 
the case, she did not shrink from tasks and dan- 
gers usually falling to men. And, for all her 
hardihood and energy, she remained essentially 
[811 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

womanly, finding her chief interest in her home, 
her husband, and her children. It was for 
them she toiled and sacrificed, directing her 
every effort to the upbuilding and preservation 
of a happy home life. 

All these traits became manifest in the Ameri- 
can woman at a very early date, and with the 
passage of time they were accentuated rather 
than diminished. The truth of this is strikingly 
shown by the course she pursued during the 
great struggle which ended only with the com- 
plete separation of the colonies from the 
mother country, and the establishment of the 
free and independent United States of America. 

From the first mutterings of the approaching 
storm, women were quick to urge their hus- 
bands and sons to oppose vigorously the slight- 
est infringement of what they held to be their 
rights. Women were enthusiastic supporters 
of the early measures of resistance — non-im- 
portation agreements and the like — by which 
it was hoped to convince the British govern- 
[82] 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

ment of the folly of attempting to impose on 
the colonists laws not of their own making 
and contrary to their desire. 
V In every colony, matrons and maids resumed 
the old-fashioned industry of making home- 
spun clothing, and banded themselves into 
associations to forego, at no matter what per- 
sonal inconvenience, the use of imported goods. 
" Liberty tea," brewed of loosestrife, sage, 
ribwort, strawberry, currant, raspberry, or 
plantain leaves, became a popular beverage. No 
discomfort was too great for the women of 
America to undergo in their effort to help the 
men prove that England need not expect to 
do business with her colonies so long as she 
dealt with them unjustly and oppressively^ 
And when this usually powerful argument of 
appeal to the purse failed — when England, 
instead of yielding gracefully and meeting the 
colonists in a conciliatory spirit, chose instead 
to send over troops to dragoon them into sub- 
mission — the wives and daughters of the 
[831 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

" rebels " were zealous as before in counseling 
resistance, if need be to the death. 

Nor did they falter when the gage of battle 
was actually thrown down — when the news 
from Lexington, carried by swift riders from 
colony to colony, announced that war had at 
last become inevitable. With splendid prompt- 
ness of decision, they hastened to make ready 
their men for the fray, to send them forth well- 
armed, well-clothed, and strengthened by the 
knowledge that they were leaving at home 
not weeping and despairing women, but women 
whose greatest hope was that their loved ones 
would indeed acquit themselves like men. 

Typical of the prevailing spirit is a letter 
written by a Philadelphia lady in the first 
year of the war, and addressed to a British 
officer with whom she was well acquainted. 
In part she wrote to him: 

" I will tell you what I have done. My only 
brother I have sent to the camp with my 
prayers and blessings. I hope he will not dis- 
[84] 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

grace me; I am confident he will behave with 
honor, and emulate the great examples he has 
before him; and had I twenty sons and brothers 
they should go. I have retrenched every 
superfluous expense in my table and family; 
tea I have not drunk since last Christmas, nor 
bought a new cap or gown since your defeat at 
Lexington; and, what I never did before, have 
learned to knit, and am now making stockings 
of American wool for my servants; and this 
way do I throw in my mite to the public good. 
" I know this — that as free I can die but 
once, but as a slave I shall not be worthy of 
life. I have the pleasure to assure you that 
these are the sentiments of all my sister Ameri- 
cans. They have sacrificed assemblies, parties 
of pleasure, tea drinking and finery, to that 
great spirit of patriotism that actuates all 
degrees of people throughout this extensive 
continent. If these are the sentiments of 
females, what must glow in the breasts of 
our husbands, brothers, and sons! They are 
[851 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

as with one heart determined to die or to be 
free. . . . Heaven seems to smile on us; for 
in the memory of man, never were known such 
quantities of flax, and sheep without number. 
We are making powder fast, and do not want 
for ammunition." 

Many a tale is told ^ of the Spartan spirit 
shown by the women of the American Revol- 
ution. Mary Draper, of Dedham, Massachu- 
setts, at the first call to arms, not only bade her 
husband hurry to his country's aid, but strapped 
a knapsack on the back of her son, a lad of six- 
teen, and thrust a gun into his hands with the 
remark that, young as he was, America needed 
him and he must go. In South Carolina, 
when Judge Gaston's many sons volunteered 
in a body, Mrs. Katherine Steel, who already 
had one son in the patriot army, ordered his 
younger brother to enlist, telling him: " You 
must go now and fight the battles of our coun- 

1 Especially in Mrs. E. F. Ellet's " Women of the American 
Revolution," from which the above letter is quoted. 

rsei 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

try with John. It must never be said that 
old Squire Gaston's boys have done more for 
the Hberty of their country than the Widow 
Steel's." Another Revolutionary mother, 
whose name has faded from recollection, in- 
sisted that her two young sons volunteer, and 
when one complained that he had no rifle, she 
grimly assured him that he would find plenty 
of spare weapons on the battle-field. 

It is pleasant to recall, too, the brave words 
spoken by Mrs. Sidney Berry, of New Jersey. 
Her home was for a time the headquarters of 
Washington, and her husband was one of 
Washington's officers. One morning the order 
was issued to march to an attack, and to Mrs. 
Berry's mortification the command of her hus- 
band's men had to be given to another, as 
Berry was away from home on some private 
business. Shortly after the departure of the 
troops, however, he came galloping up, eagerly 
inquired which road the soldiers had taken, 
obtained a fresh mount, and started after them. 
[871 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

As he rode off, Mrs. Berry threw open an 
upper window, leaned out, and cried: " Sidney! 
Sidney! " Back he galloped to receive her 
parting admonition: " Remember, Sidney, 
to do your duty. I would rather hear that you 
were left a corpse on the field than that you 
had played the part of a coward." 

Thus, throughout the long years of warfare, 
the patriot soldiery were spurred to countless 
deeds of valor by the self-sacrificing devotion 
of the heroic and liberty-loving women of 
America. And it was not simply moral support 
that they received from the women, who la- 
bored actively in many ways for the suc- 
cess of the American cause, at times going 
so far as to fill the warrior's role them- 
selves. 

An instance of this occurred at the very be- 
ginning of the war. After the battle of Lex- 
ington, when the minutemen of the Massachu- 
setts-New Hampshire border had started for 
Boston in response to the appeal for troops, 
[881 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

a rumor spread that British regulars were ad- 
vancing to destroy the border towns. Scarcely 
one able-bodied man was to be found fot miles 
around, but the women of Groton, Pepperell, 
and other neighboring places, promptly made 
it evident that they did not need men to defend 
them. 

Meeting in convention, exactly as the men 
were accustomed to do, they elected a com- 
mander — Mrs. David Wright, of Pepperell — 
dressed themselves in suits belonging to their 
absent husbands, seized whatever arms they 
could find, and marched to a bridge over the 
Nashua River between Groton and Pepperell, 
where they awaited the foe. Luckily rumor, as 
is so often the case, proved false; no enemy ap- 
peared, and the day ended without a battle. 
But before dispersing to their homes, the fair 
volunteers had the satisfaction of capturing 
a well-known Tory, who was carrying des- 
patches to the British authorities at Boston. 
His despatches they forwarded to the Committee 
[89] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

of Safety, and himself they brought in triumph 
to Groton as a prisoner. 

This, of course, was an impromptu affair, 
as was most of the fighting done by women 
during the Revolution. Not even the case of 
the famous " Captain Molly " is exceptional 
in this respect. She was the wife of a gunner 
in the patriot army, a young Irishwoman of 
twenty-two, sturdy, red-haired, and freckled, 
but handsome nevertheless. Following the 
army for months, she gave a signal display 
of bravery at the defense of Fort Clinton, when, 
her husband having abandoned his gun and 
joined in the retreat, she took his place and 
discharged the last cannon fired before the fort 
fell into the hands of the British. 

Still more dramatic was her conduct on the 
field of Monmouth. While carrying a bucket 
of water to her husband — in fact, when al- 
most at his side — a shot from the enemy 
stretched him dead at her feet. With the cry 
of an enraged tigress, she dropped the bucket, 
[901 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

seized the rammer from his stiffening fingers, 
and swore to avenge his death. All through 
the battle she worked his cannon desperately, 
to the wondering admiration of her fellow-gun- 
ners, and the amazement of every officer who 
chanced to see her. 

There was at least one woman, however, who 
regularly enlisted for the war, served in the 
ranks several months, was seriously wounded, 
and in the end was given an honorable discharge. 
This was the Massachusetts heroine, Deborah 
Sampson. Just what motives led her to don 
man's clothing and enter the army will in all 
probability never be known. Patriotism, we 
may feel sure, was among them, as also a zest 
for adventure and novelty; for, from her ear- 
liest youth, she had shown herself uncommonly 
adventurous and daring. Of humble birth, 
the daughter of a hard-working fisherman who 
lost his life at sea while she was still a little 
girl, Deborah was obliged to earn her own living 
at a tender age, and found employment as a 
[91] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

household servant with a Middleboro family. 
Here she remained until she was eighteen, 
when, having contrived to pick up a smattering 
of education, she turned school-teacher for 
a couple of years. 

By this time the Revolution was far advanced 
and all the land was ringing with war's alarms. 
Deborah — always bold, enterprising, and fear- 
less — listened breathlessly to the tales of 
feats at arms performed by the sons of liberty; 
and secretly longed to strike a blow for her 
country and for freedom's sake. Out of this 
longing there gradually grew the resolution 
to pose as a man and wear a soldier's uniform. 
One or two preliminary trials in masculine 
attire — including, it is said, a night excursion 
to a near-by tavern — convinced her that she 
would have little difficulty in concealing her 
sex; and accordingly, late in May, 1782, she 
sought a recruiting-officer and enlisted for 
three years under the assumed name of Robert 
Shurtliffe. 

[92] 




DEBORAH SAMPSON. 

From an old engraving. 

Page 92. 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

Mustered in at Worcester, she was soon sent 
to West Point with some fifty other fledgHng 
soldiers; and from West Point, clad in the 
picturesque blue and white uniform of the 
Fourth Massachusetts, she was immediately 
ordered on scouting duty in the country around 
New York. None for a moment suspected that 
the good-looking, lithe, beardless young soldier 
was a woman. On the contrary, it was felt that 
one so vigorous and alert was peculiarly qual- 
ified for the hazardous work of a scout. Thus 
it came about that, although the last important 
campaign of the Revolutionary War had been 
fought before Deborah enlisted, she still found 
adventures in plenty. 

On her very first expedition she was badly 
wounded during a skirmish near Tarrytown 
between her company and a contingent of 
Delancy's cavalry. For a skirmish, it was 
quite a sanguinary affair. Deborah's left-hand 
neighbor was shot dead at the enemy's second 
volley, and she herself received a bullet in 
[93] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

the thigh, besides a flesh-wound in the head. 
Her first thought was that discovery of her sex 
could no longer be avoided; but, by pretending 
that the flesh-wound was her only injury, and 
personally dressing the wound in her thigh, 
she managed to keep her secret from even the 
hospital surgeon. 

Dread of discovery, however, hurried her 
back into the service long before the thigh 
wound had properly healed. As she afterward 
declared: "Had the most hardy soldier been 
in the condition I was when I left the hospital, 
he would have been excused from military 
duty." 

Fortunately, soon after returning to camp 
she obtained permission to nurse a sick com- 
rade, and this gave her opportunity to recu- 
perate. After which she again went scout- 
ing — or raiding, to be exact — and displayed 
great zeal in ferreting out and capturing loyal- 
ists. Still later, in November of 1782, she 
took part in Schuyler's expedition against the 
[94] 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

Indians of upper New York, an expedition 
which sorely taxed both her courage and her 
strength. 

Then followed an uneventful winter and 
spring; in the early summer, a journey to 
Philadelphia with troops sent for the purpose 
of repressing the mutinous soldiers who threat- 
ened to compel Congress at the bayonet's 
point to pay their arrears of wages; an attack 
of fever while on duty in Philadelphia, and the 
long-dreaded discovery that Robert Shurt- 
liffe was a woman, not a man. 

Happily for Deborah the discovery was made 
by a prudent, kind-hearted surgeon named 
Binney, who instead of noising abroad the sen- 
sational fact confided it only to the matron of 
the hospital. Indeed, so soon as Deborah was 
well enough to be moved she was taken to 
Doctor Binney's house and shown every kind- 
ness by him, her secret being guarded so well 
that ere long she actually found herself in- 
volved in a love-affair with a Baltimore girl, 
[95] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

who had fallen a victim to the pseiido Robert 
Shurtliffe's fascinating ways. 

This had the effect of increasing Deborah's 
desire to leave Philadelphia and rejoin her 
regiment; but, on the eve of her departure, 
Doctor Binney gave her a letter — addressed 
to General Patterson, at West Point, whither 
she was bound — containing the revelation 
of her sex. Naturally, her discharge from the 
army speedily followed. Accepting it philo- 
sophically, though with sincere regret, the re- 
markable young woman — she was still less 
than twenty-three years old — laid aside her 
handsome uniform, returned to Middleboro, 
and settled down to domestic life, within a 
few months marrying Benjamin Gannett, of 
Sharon, where she made her home until her 
death in 1827.^ 

From the point of view of concrete helpful- 
ness in encouraging and stimulating the sol- 

* A biography of Deborah Sampson under the title of 
" The Female Review," was published by H. Mann in 1797. 

f961 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

diers of America, it need hardly be pointed out 
that Deborah Sampson's bravery counted for 
extremely little, for the sufficient reason that 
at the time nobody knew she was a woman. 
Far greater value attaches to the courage and 
endurance of a little group of officers' wives 
who, without taking up arms, exposed them- 
selves to the horrors of war for the sake of 
being near and being of aid to their husbands. 

Bonnie Catharine Greene, wife of General 
Nathanael Greene, was one of this number, 
sustaining the hardships of that terrible winter 
at Valley Forge as cheerfully as, at an earlier 
day, she had turned her beautiful Rhode 
Island home into an army hospital. Lucy 
Knox, who separated from her loyalist rela- 
tives to share the fortunes of her " rebel " 
lover, afterward General Henry Knox, was 
another who graced army headquarters with 
her genial presence. 

So, too, was Martha Washington, whose 
proud boast in after years was that it had been 
[97] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

her fortune to hear the first gun at the opening 
and the last at the closing of the most important 
campaigns of the long war. It would be im- 
possible, in the space at my command, to give 
an adequate account of the manifold services 
rendered to the cause of America by this noble 
wife of the great commander. Some idea may 
be gained, however, by glancing at two pic- 
tures of her life at headquarters, as drawn by 
women who were brought into intimate contact 
with her. The first of these sketches was given 
to Mrs. Washington's biographer, Benson J. 
Lossing, by a Mrs. Westlake, a resident of the 
Valley Forge country. 

" I never in my life," Mrs. Westlake told 
Lossing, " knew a woman so busy from early 
morning until late at night as was Lady Wash- 
ington, providing comforts for the sick soldiers. 
Every day, excepting Sunday, the wives of 
officers in camp, and sometimes other women, 
were invited to Mr. Potts' — Washington's 
Valley Forge headquarters — to assist her in 
[98] 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

knitting socks, patching garments, and making 
shirts for the poor soldiers, when materials 
could be procured. Every fair day she might 
be seen, with basket in hand, and with a 
single attendant, going among the huts, seek- 
ing the keenest and most needy sufferers, and 
giving all the comforts to them in her power. 
I sometimes went with her, for I was a stout 
girl, sixteen years old. On one occasion she 
went to the hut of a dying sergeant, whose young 
wife was with him. His case seemed to par- 
ticularly touch the heart of the good lady, and 
after she had given him some wholesome food 
she had prepared with her own hands, she knelt 
down by his straw pallet and prayed earnestly 
for him and his wife with her sweet and solemn 
voice. I shall never forget the scene." 

No less impressive, in its way, is the viva- 
cious description given by Mrs. Troupe, of 
Morristown, of a visit paid to Mrs. Washing- 
ton when the latter was living with her hus- 
band in winter quarters at the Arnold Tavern. 
[99] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

" Several of us," said Mrs. Troupe, in re- 
lating her experience to the wife of the Rev- 
erend Joseph F. Tuttle, to whom the present 
generation owes this interesting side-light on 
Revolutionary history, " several of us thought 
we would visit Lady Washington, and as she 
was said to be so grand a lady we thought we 
must put on our best bibs and bands. So we 
dressed ourselves in our most elegant ruffles 
and silks, and were introduced to her ladyship. 
And don't you think! We found her knitting 
and with a specked apron on ! She received us 
very graciously and easily, but after the com- 
pliments were over she resumed her knitting. 
There we were without a stitch of work, and 
sitting in state, but General Washington's 
lady with her own hands was knitting stockings 
for herself and husband. 

" And that was not all. In the afternoon 

her ladyship took occasion to say, in a way that 

we could not be offended at, that at this time 

it was very important that American ladies 

flOOl 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

should be patterns of industry to their coun- 
trywomen, because the separation from the 
mother country will dry up the sources whence 
many of our comforts have been derived. We 
must become independent by our determina- 
tion to do without what we cannot ourselves 
make. Whilst our husbands and brothers 
are examples of patriotism, we must be pat- 
terns of industry." 

Throughout the country were women who 
shared to the full this sentiment of Martha 
Washington's, and as a result the Revolution- 
ary period was distinctly a time when women 
toiled at every imaginable sort of task. In all 
the colonies were women who — like Dorcas 
Matteson and Anne Aldrich, of Rhode Island 
— thought nothing of cradling their infants 
among , the branches of a tree, while they 
labored in the fields, making hay, harvesting 
corn, hoeing potatoes, and in many other ways 
doing the work of their absent farmer husbands 
who had answered their country's call. 
[101] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

Bertha Louise Colburn, who has made a 
special study of the part played by New Hamp- 
shire women in the Revolution/ mentions 
particularly the wives of James Aiken, of Bed- 
ford; William Hawkins, of Wilton; Charles 
Glidden, of Northfield, and George Reid, of 
Londonderry, as skilful and energetic adminis- 
trators of their husbands' farms while the 
latter were at the front. Mrs. Abigail Butler, 
of Nottingham, managed not only a farm but 
a tavern during the absence of her husband 
and two sons, all of whom were in the patriot 
army. So did Mrs. Abigail Reed, whose hus- 
band and two oldest sons fought at Bunker 
Hill and elsewhere. Of another remarkable 
New Hampshire wife and mother, Mrs. Peter 
Coffin, of Boscawen, the same investigator 
reports in more detail: 

" Mrs. Coffin was a woman of firm convic- 
tions and intensely patriotic, so when the duty 
was laid upon tea she put away the few ounces 
* In The New England Magazine, February, 1912. 
[1021 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

she had in her caddy, and would not have any 
of it used until the tax was repealed. 

" At the time when the men were hurrying 
away to Ticonderoga, in July, 1777, Mrs. 
Coffin heard that two soldiers who had been 
ordered to march the next morning had no 
shirts. She had a web partially woven in her 
loom. Seizing her shears, she cut away what 
she had woven, and sitting up all night, cut 
and made the two shirts ready for the men in 
the morning. 

" Ten days later she gave birth to her fifth 
child, Thomas, and in a month, at the news 
of Bennington, her husband, who had been 
out in the previous campaign, started once 
more, leaving to her the care of the farm. The 
wheat was dead-ripe, and the birds were de- 
vouring it, but how was it to be harvested.? 
Nearly every able-bodied man in town had 
hastened to Vermont to drive away the enemy. 
" Then Mrs. Coffin remembered that Mr. 
Enoch Little had older boys. So leaving her 
[103] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

four oldest children under the care of a boy 
of seven, she took her infant in her arms, 
mounted her horse, and proceeded towards 
the cabin of Mr. Little. Three sons were away 
in the army, and there was left at home only 
Enoch, a lad of fourteen. 

" ' He can go,' said Mrs. Little, * but he has 
no clothes.' 

" Mrs. Coffin looked at Enoch, clad in worn 
tow-and-linsey trousers and ragged shirt. 

" ' I can provide him with a coat,' she said. 

" Taking a meal-bag she cut in it three holes, 
X j one for his head and two for his arms, and in 
the latter she sewed for sleeves the legs of two 
of her own stockings! Then she went out into 
the field, and, laying her infant under a tree, 
bound the sheaves; and thus the grain was 
harvested." 

Mary Draper, the Dedham matron of whom 

we have heard already, was a woman of the 

same resourceful type. No sooner had she 

started her husband and son on their way to 

[1041 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

the front, than she summoned her daughter and 
began to bake loaves by the score for the hun- 
gry soldiers, who soon were passing her door 
on their way to Boston. Again it was Mary 
Draper who, when Washington appealed to 
the people of New England to sacrifice their 
lead and pewter for the purpose of giving the 
army an adequate supply of ammunition, not 
merely contributed generously from a store of 
pewter ornaments that included many heir- 
looms, but herself molded the precious ma- 
terial into bullets. 

Nursing wounded and invalid soldiers, vis- 
iting patriots immured in British prisons, and 
providing the army with clothing and other 
necessaries, formed another noteworthy phase 
of woman's work in the Revolution. Not a 
few women paid with their lives for their sub- 
lime devotion to the demands of pity, charity, 
and patriotism. 

Andrew Jackson's mother was one of these, 
for she was stricken with fever after a journey 
[105] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

to Charleston to carry clothes and provisions 
to friends on the prison-ship in that port. Only 
a few months before, following the rout and 
slaughter of Buford's men by Tarleton's troop- 
ers, she had fled from her home on the Waxhaw. 
Now, in a ragged tent in the midst of the Caro- 
lina wilderness, she breathed her last and was 
buried in an unmarked grave by the roadside, 
leaving to her little Andrew, the future hero 
of New Orleans and President of the United 
States, a legacy of naught but bitter and un- 
ending hatred for England and all things Eng- 
lish. 

Another woman who laid down her life for 
America — a heroine who literally wore her- 
self out by good works — was Esther Reed 
of Philadelphia. It was her distinction to or- 
ganize the women of Philadelphia in their con- 
certed and wonderfully successful efforts to 
raise funds for the relief of Washington's 
distressed army in the gloomy year 1780. As 
president of the relief association, the brunt of 
[1061 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

its labors fell on Mrs. Reed, but she bore them 
cheerfully, and in fact enthusiastically. At 
her solicitation contributions poured in from 
many sources — ranging in amount from the few 
shillings offered by a poor colored woman to 
the hundred guineas in specie donated by 
Lafayette, in behalf of his wife, in a character- 
istically gallant letter. Lafayette wrote, ad- 
dressing Mrs. Reed: 

" Madame, in admiring the new resolution 
in which the fair ones of Philadelphia have 
taken the lead, I am induced to feel for those 
American ladies who, being out of the continent, 
cannot participate in this patriotic measure. 
I know of one who, heartily wishing for a per- 
sonal acquaintance with the ladies of America, 
would feel particularly happy to be admitted 
among them on the present occasion. Without 
presuming to break in upon the rules of your 
respected association, may I most humbly 
present myself as her ambassador to the con- 
federated ladies, and solicit in her name that 
[107] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

Mrs. President be pleased to accept of her offer- 
ing." 

This letter was written on the twenty-fifth 
of June, 1780. Less than three months later, 
her frail body shattered by her unremitting 
exertions in behalf of the American army, 
Esther Reed ended her earthly career at the 
early age of thirty-four. All Philadelphia sin- 
cerely mourned the passing of her gentle spirit, 
patriot and loyalist for the moment sinking 
their differences and uniting in a common senti- 
ment of earnest grief. 

Yet another way in which the women of 
America advanced the cause of freedom, was 
by conveying timely intelligence of the enemy's 
plans and whereabouts to the leaders of the 
American army; and, when occasion offered, 
by deceiving the enemy as to the movements 
of the patriot forces. Many instances of such 
service are on record, but one or two illustra- 
tions must suflSce. 

As impressive as any is the story of the Phil- 
[1081 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

adelphia Quakeress, Lydia Darrah. ^ At the time 
— December, 1777 — the British under Howe 
were in possession of Philadelphia, and Wash- 
ington was encamped with his army some fifteen 
miles north of that city at a place called White 
Marsh. The Darrah house in Philadelphia 
was a roomy, comfortable building, and was 
frequently used by the British officers as a 
council-hall. One day, Mrs. Darrah was noti- 
fied that a meeting would be held that evening, 
and the officer informing her added signifi- 
cantly: 

" You need not await our departure. In fact, 
be sure to go to bed early, you and all your 
family. When we are ready to leave, I will 
knock at your door, that you may rise and 
close after us." 

It needed nothing more to convince the quick- 
witted Quakeress that business of special im- 

^ First made public in The American Quarterly Review, 
and there stated as given on the authority of several of Lydia 
Darrah's friends. 

[109] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

portance was on foot; and, being at heart a 
" rebel " of the deepest dye, she resolved to 
play eavesdropper. Waiting impatiently until 
the secret council was well under way, she left 
her bedroom, stole down-stairs in stockinged 
feet, and put her ear to the keyhole. At first 
she heard only a confused murmur of voices. 
Then, suddenly, some one read an order re- 
lating to an expedition which, in twenty-four 
hours, was to be unexpectedly launched against 
the American camp at White Marsh. 

Here, clearly, was the purpose of the con- 
ference — to arrange the details of the pro- 
jected surprise. Slipping back to bed, Mrs. 
Darrah vehemently told herself that Washing- 
ton must be warned. But how? She could 
trust her message to no one. All night she 
tossed and fretted, but by morning her mind 
was made up. Pretending that she wished to 
procure some flour from the mill at Frankford, 
she readily obtained a pass through the British 
lines, and once outside of Philadelphia made 
[110] 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

all haste toward the American camp. On the 
way she met one of Washington's aides, who 
knew her well, and promptly asked what had 
brought her so far from the city. 

" I have something to tell you," said she, 
in a whisper; " follow me closely as I walk, yet 
not too closely, for you must not seem to be 
with me, as otherwise my life might be forfeit. 
The British plan to attack you to-morrow." 

And, speaking hurriedly, she told him all 
she had overheard. 

Late that night, as she lay in bed, the sound 
of receding hoof-beats came to her ears, and 
she knew that the secret expedition was leav- 
ing Philadelphia. But she also knew that Wash- 
ington was expecting it, and that on the morrow 
the British would return — as they did — a 
thoroughly discomfited army. As the oflScer 
who had notified her of the meeting, afterward 
said to her, in a tone of mingled amazement 
and wrath: 

" I cannot imagine who carried news of 
[1111 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

our intended attack to General Washington. 
When we got near his camp, we found cannon 
mounted, gunners ready, and troops under 
arms — everything so well prepared that there 
was nothing for us to do but face about and 
ride back like a parcel of fools." 

In similar fashion, Mrs. Jane Thomas, of 
the South Carolina backwoods, chanced one 
day to hear of a projected raid against a patriot 
camp at Cedar Springs, leaped on a horse, 
rode nearly sixty miles, and arrived in time to 
alarm the " rebels," who included several of 
her own large family of sons. By the time the 
loyalist raiders made their appearance a counter- 
surprise was arranged, with the result that 
although greatly superior in numbers the in- 
vaders were repulsed with heavy loss. 

This Jane Thomas, by the way, was a veri- 
table Amazon. Once, after her husband and 
some of his friends had hastily fled before an 
oncoming party of loyalists, Mrs. Thomas and 
her daughters, aided by a Josiah Culberson 
[112] 



THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

who had refused to seek safety by flight, beat 
back the assailants when they attempted to 
take the Thomas log cabin by storm. 

Unquestionably, she was animated by the 
same spirit which, also in South Carolina, 
found expression in Isabella Ferguson's bold 
defiance of her loyalist brother-in-law. Colonel 
James Ferguson: 

" Yes, I am a rebel! My brothers are rebels! 
And our dog Trip is a rebel, too! " 

Finally, it must not be forgotten that not 
all the women of America sympathized with 
the patriot cause. There were many who, 
like their husbands and sons, clung steadfast 
in their allegiance to the British Crown, and 
suffered fearfully for their faithfulness. As 
historians are now beginning to realize, the 
patriot men and women had no monopoly 
of heroism in the stirring years of the Revolu- 
tion. The loyalists for their part — and the 
women equally with the men — proved that, 
so far as spirit, endurance, and bravery were 
[113] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

concerned, they, too, were of the stuff of true 
Americans. 

It was true Americanism that prompted the 
loyalist women of New York to subscribe 
money for the fitting out of a privateer to be 
called the Fair American — a name which 
evoked from a local bard these effusive lines: 

Assured be that every honest man 

Will idolize the Fair American. 

Brave loyal tars, with hearts of oak, will vie, 

For you to fight, to conquer, live, or. die. 

Like true Americans, the loyalist women 
served the cause to which they had given them- 
selves with a zeal, earnestness, and unselfish- 
ness fittingly comparable with that shown by the 
patriot wives and daughters. And when the 
end came, when victory had definitely crowned 
the patriot cause, and independence was finally 
achieved, these loyalist heroines unfalteringly 
followed their loved ones into a bitter exile. 
Patriot or loyalist — the women of the Ameri- 
can Revolution were indeed superb. 
[1141 



CHAPTER IV 

HEROINES OF THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

IT is a most impressive coincidence that the 
year which witnessed the beginning of the 
War for Independence also saw the conquest 
of the mountain barrier that had so long con- 
fined the American people to the country bor- 
dering on the sea. In 1775 — the year of 
Lexington, Ticonderoga, and Bunker Hill — 
Daniel Boone and his daring little company 
of trail-makers blazed the famous Wilderness 
Road leading from the rock-ribbed region of 
the lower Appalachians to the rich lands of 
the Mississippi Valley. It was as though Des- 
tiny, in nerving the Americans to strike for 
freedom, had been careful to prepare the way 
for their future growth as a nation. 

Certainly, the opening of the Wilderness 
Road was the signal for the commencement 
[115] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

of a mighty migratory movement. It began 
the year the Road was cleared, and it exercised 
a distinct influence on the outcome of the Rev- 
olution; since, thanks to those over-the-moun- 
tain settlers who took up arms under the leader- 
ship of such men as George Rogers Clark and 
John Sevier, the British and their Indian allies 
were prevented from dealing deadly rear at- 
tacks against the insurgent colonies. 

After the Revolution, the westward move- 
ment increased so rapidly in volume that the 
traveler, Morris Birkbeck, watching a long 
line of caravans passing through the Pennsyl- 
vania forests, could wittily declare that " Old 
America seems to be breaking up and moving 
westward." The significant fact was that the 
passage of the mountains was not a retreat 
but an advance, an unconscious serving of 
notice that the nation had outgrown its earlier 
limits and had begun its forward march to 
the waters of the Pacific. 

Nor, especially in the first years of the move- 
[116] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

ment, could anything testify more forcibly 
to the courage, hardihood, and virility of the 
men and women of America. If the people 
of the coast and of the foot-hills were menaced 
by the British redcoat and the Hessian hire- 
ling, those who turned their faces toward the 
West and plunged into the ocean of forest and 
mountain were confronted by far more for- 
midable dangers. Death in an agonizing 
form at the hands of the savage Indian, at 
the fangs of some wild beast, from exhaustion 
or from starvation, was a constant peril. 

And this no matter what road they took, 
whether the long, tortuous Wilderness Road 
from the Watauga settlements of North Caro- 
lina to the Falls of the Ohio, where Louisville 
stands to-day, or the easier but more dangerous 
Ohio River route from Fort Pitt in western 
Pennsylvania. When their journey's end was 
reached, danger still overshadowed them. They 
had to be ceaselessly on guard against the cruel, 
copper-colored foe; had to build forts, block- 
[117] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

houses, houses of refuge; had, often, to trust 
to the bounty of nature to supply them with 
food, cut off as they were from the well-devel- 
oped East by hundreds of miles of wilderness. 
Yet in they came — at first by little companies, 
but soon by hundreds and thousands. 

History, in fact, was repeating itself in this 
great movement across the mountains, with 
the single but important difference that the 
new generation of emigrants, unhke those who 
had flocked from Europe to America in the 
time of the founding, were not fugitives from 
oppression. Like their predecessors, however, 
they were essentially home-seekers, a circum- 
stance which more than any other has had a 
determining influence on the history of the 
United States. They were in quest not of gold 
or of adventure, but of land which they might 
call their own, untilled wastes which they could 
convert into profitable pastures and grain- 
fields. This was their ideal — to make a home 
and to own it. And, as they well knew, it was 
[118] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

an ideal that could not be fully realized with- 
out the loving assistance of their wives, who 
gladly volunteered to face the perils of the 
unknown wilds by the side of those they 
loved, and were indeed women worthy of 
remembrance as makers and winners of the 
West. 

Many pressed forward even after they had 
learned by some tragic experience the immen- 
sity and danger of their undertaking. It was 
thus, for example, with the Boones, perhaps 
the most celebrated of all pioneer families. 
Daniel Boone, the head of the family, was a 
native of Pennsylvania, but emigrated at an 
early age to the fertile Yadkin Valley in north- 
western North Carolina. There he met, wooed, 
and married Rebecca Bryan, a bonnie, black- 
eyed Scotch-Irish lassie of seventeen. 

For some years they lived quietly on the 
Yadkin, but in 1769, fired by the tales of a wan- 
dering fur-trader, Boone organized an exploring 
expedition to visit Kentucky, at that time a 
[1191 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

no-man's land, without a single white inhab- 
itant and used by the Indians merely as a 
hunting-ground. What he saw so delighted 
him that he resolved to make Kentucky his 
home, and on returning East induced a number 
of his neighbors to remove thither with him. 
September 25, 1773, the start was made, the 
emigrants forming a picturesque cavalcade as, 
mounted on horses and driving a herd of cattle 
before them, they waved a last farewell to their 
Yadkin Valley friends and wound their way up 
a steep mountain trail. 

Travel by wagon was impossible, for the 
route lay mainly by Indian paths and buffalo 
traces through a mountainous and heavily 
wooded country. Nor, for the same reason, 
could they take with them anything except the 
barest necessaries — simple household goods, 
farm implements, and the like. All of these 
were transported on the backs of pack-horses, 
where the children too small to sit a saddle but 
too big to be carried in their mothers' arms, 
[120] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

were also stowed away, securely strapped among 
bedding, pots, and pans. At night the entire 
company slept around a camp-fire under the 
open sky. It was primitive traveling, by a 
primitive but great people. 

The first feeling of depression at leaving 
their old homes soon wore away, and by the 
time Powell's Valley was reached, and they 
approached Cumberland Gap, the broad gate- 
way to the West, all were in the highest spirits, 
eagerly anticipating their arrival in Kentucky, 
which Boone had pictured as an earthly para- 
dise. 

But it chanced that, all unknown to them, 
an Indian war-party was passing through 
Powell's Valley, fresh from a raid against the 
villages of some hostile tribe. Sighting some 
of the emigrants, who had temporarily sepa- 
rated from the main body, and seeing in them 
not peaceful travelers but their hereditary 
foes, the inevitable happened. Boone's oldest 
son, a bright, sturdy youth of seventeen, fell 
[121] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

at the first fire, and several other men were 
killed. 

Here was a speedy and fatal intimation of 
the many similar tragedies to be enacted in 
later times along the blood-won road to Ken- 
tucky. Boone himself, notwithstanding the 
death of his son, wished to proceed, and his 
faithful wife, drying her tears like the mothers 
of ancient Sparta, announced her readiness 
to accompany him. But in spite of entreaties 
the others turned back, leaving the Boones, 
who took up their residence in a deserted cabin, 
to await another opportunity of recruiting 
volunteers for the opening up of the Western 
lands. 

More than a year passed before the chance 
came. Then Boone was engaged to serve as 
pilot and road-maker for a company of wealthy 
Carolinians who had undertaken to colonize 
Kentucky. Setting out at the head of a care- 
fully chosen party of thirty expert backwoods- 
men, he traveled for nearly a month, painfully 
[122] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

hewing out the historic Wilderness Road ^ 
over which so many thousands of sturdy pio- 
neers were to adventure within the next few 
years. 

Onward Boone's men marched and chopped 
and fought — for the Indians were eager to 
shut up the path — until, on April 1, 1775, 
they reached the Kentucky River. There, 
in the heart of the Blue Grass region, they built 
a settlement which they fittingly named Boones- 
borough; and thither, so soon as he had cleared 
a patch of land, sown some corn, and built a 
cabin, Boone brought his wife and their seven 
boys and girls. 

" My wife and daughters," as he was proud 
to recall in his old age, " were the first white 
women to set foot on the banks of Kentucky." 

But he had brought them to a hard and peril- 

1 A detailed account of the opening up of this first great 
highway to the West will be found in the present writer's 
" Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road/' a book intended 
to serve the dual purpose of a biography of Boone and a his- 
tory of early Western settlement. 

[123] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

ous life. The killing of their son had been a 
warning of what might be expected in Kentucky; 
the narrow escape of fourteen-year-old Jemima 
Boone from Indian captivity, showed still 
more plainly the vital need for constant watch- 
fulness. Indeed, it was the first notification 
received by the settlers of Boonesborough, 
which had grown rapidly, that they were 
threatened by a disastrous Indian war. 

One summer afternoon in 1776, Jemima 
Boone and two sisters named Callaway, while 
boating on the Kentucky, allowed their canoe to 
drift close to the opposite bank. Here, behind 
a bush, five Shawnee warriors were in hiding, 
and although the spot was not more than a 
quarter of a mile from Boonesborough, one 
of the Shawnees struck boldly out into the 
water, seized the canoe, and dragged it to shore 
with its screaming occupants. 

Once in the power of the Indians, however, 
these youthful daughters of the wilderness 
betrayed a wonderful self-possession and re- 
[124] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

sourcefulness. They knew enough of In- 
dian customs to reahze that if their strength 
failed them, and they should prove unequal 
to the long march to the Shawnee towns on the 
Ohio, they would be slaughtered mercilessly. 
So they stifled their sobs, and calmly accom- 
panied their captors without protest or struggle. 
At every opportunity, though, they secretly 
tore little pieces from their clothing and attached 
them to bushes on the trail. Nothing more 
was needed to inform Boone and his fellow 
settlers, who had quickly started in pursuit, 
that they were on the right track, and on the 
second day of the captivity they caught up 
with the Indians. A volley laid two Shawnees 
low, the rest fled, and by the close of another 
day the girls were safe in the arms of their 
thankful mothers. 

This was but the beginning of unnumbered 

woes for the people of Boonesborough, Harrods- 

burg, and the other hamlets and forts which 

by this time dotted central Kentucky. Indian 

[125] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

skirmishes, raids, battles, and sieges became 
part of the daily routine of life, and great were 
the losses inflicted by the red men, roused to 
fury by the invasion of their ancestral hunting- 
grounds and, at all events during the Revolu- 
tion, incited against the settlers by the British 
authorities at Detroit. 

But the storm of their hostility did not blot 
out the pioneers and their habitations. Meet- 
ing the foe unflinchingly, both men and women 
rose at times to sublime heights of heroism 
and devotion. There was many a woman who, 
like Rebecca Boone, learned to do and dare 
as much as, and sometimes more than, a man 
would in the face of dire need and impending 
catastrophe. For these mothers of the frontier 
were not easily daunted. Rather, the harder 
pressed they were, the more conspicuously they 
rose to the occasion. 

This was demonstrated time and again in 
the seven years of almost perpetual warfare 
waged between the Western settlers and the 
[126] 




P5 o '^ 

e 

o 



' ^'W^ 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

Indians during the Revolution. One of its most 
striking instances was the heroism shown by 
EHzabeth Zane ^ at the time of the second 
siege of Wheehng, to-day the chief city of 
West Virginia. 

The Zanes were among its founders, Eben- 
ezer Zane, EHzabeth's brother, having been the 
first pioneer to build a cabin at the spot where 
Wheeling Creek empties its waters into the 
Ohio. Five years later, at the beginning of 
the Revolutionary War, some twenty-five fam- 
ilies were living there protected by Fort Henry, 
a stockaded structure located on a hill overlook- 
ing the settlers' cabins and corn-fields. It had 
no armament other than a single cannon, a 
relic of the French and Indian War, but with 
its stout palisades, its overhanging block-houses, 
and its many port-holes manned by unerring 

^ There are several versions of this heroic exploit. I 
have followed that most generally accepted, and found in 
Wills De Hass's " History of the Early Settlement and 
Indian Wars of Western Virginia," published at Wheehng 
in 1851. 

[1271 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

marksmen, it was quite strong enough to with- 
stand Indian raiders, and it proved its worth 
in 1777, when four hundred redskins laid siege 
to it in vain. 

Thereafter the people of Wheeling, unlike 
the people of the Kentucky settlements farther 
south, were comparatively free from Indian 
alarms until near the close of the Revolution. 
But early in September, 1782, a mixed force 
of Shawnees, Delawares, and soldiers from the 
British post at Detroit, nearly three hundred 
men in all, under the command of a Captain 
Andrew Pratt, made a sudden descent upon the 
fort. Luckily for the settlers, half an hour 
earlier scouts had brought word of the enemy's 
approach, and this gave time for all to seek 
shelter behind the stockade. 

For some reason Ebenezer Zane and his 
family did not accompany the rest. The tradi- 
tion is that Zane's house had been burned by 
the Indians at the siege of 1777, and that this 
so exasperated the impetuous woodsman that 
[1281 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

he vowed he would never again abandon his 
dweUing-place to the torch. It was a thick- 
walled, substantial building, a miniature cita- 
del in itself, and was moreover well within 
range of the fort's cannon, a circumstance which 
aided greatly in its defense. 

But it had a pitifully small garrison, including 
only Ebenezer Zane, his brother Silas, two bor- 
derers named Green, and a negro slave, together 
with three women, Mrs. Ebenezer Zane, Eliz- 
abeth Zane, and a Molly Scott. All, men and 
women alike, prepared for a desperate struggle. 
Before making any attack, however, the inva- 
ders marched through the corn-fields about 
the deserted cabins, and into an open space 
at the foot of the fort hill. A halt was ordered 
and the commanding oflScer demanded the 
surrender of the fort, promising, rather ambig- 
uously, " the best protection King George 
could afford." 

The sinister hint of possible inability to 
restrain his savage followers from an indis- 
[129] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

criminate massacre, even if the settlers should 
surrender, was not lost on them; and in any 
event they had no intention of yielding. With 
mocking cries and jeers they bade Pratt do 
his worst, emphasizing their remarks by an oc- 
casional rifle-shot. A second summons to 
surrender met with a similar response, and just 
before sundown an attack in force was ordered. 
The Indians had not failed to note the soli- 
tary cannon mounted on a platform which 
overtopped the stockade, but they imagined 
it was simply a " Quaker cannon " — that is 
to say, a log fashioned and painted in the like- 
ness of a cannon. So, without giving it a mo- 
ment's thought, they advanced in a compact 
body. Finger on trigger, the garrison patiently 
waited until certain that every shot would 
count. Then, from the line of port-holes, 
tongues of fire burst forth, while at the same 
instant the dull boom of the cannon resounded 
overhead, venting a ball that plowed through 
the crowded ranks. 

[130] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

" Stand back! " cried Captain Pratt. " Stand 
back! There's no wood about that! " 

To quicken the retreat came an angry buzzing 
from Ebenezer Zane's house, a hornetlike sing- 
ing of bullets, every one of which found its 
billet in some red man's breast. 

Baffled, but not beaten, the attacking army 
fled to cover, whence, in small parties, they 
presently emerged to renew, not once but many 
times, the attempt to storm the fort. Always 
they were driven off, with heavy loss. Nor 
did they fare better when they tried to silence 
the incessant rifle-fire from the Zane house, 
where the women with tireless dexterity loaded 
the rifles almost as fast as the men could dis- 
charge them. Thus the night passed, without 
rest to besieged or besiegers, and not until 
noon of the next day did the enemy cease firing 
for the purpose of taking a brief sleep. 

It was then that Elizabeth Zane performed 
the feat which won for her imperishable renown 
in the annals of the border. So continuous 
[131] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

had been the battle that the supply of ammu- 
nition in her brother's house had become almost 
exhausted. The only source of a fresh supply 
was the magazine in the fort, and there was 
not an inch of sheltered ground between the 
Zane house and the hill on which the fort 
stood. It seemed madness to attempt the 
journey, but one of the Greens promptly vol- 
unteered. Then Elizabeth Zane spoke up. 

" No," said she, " none of you men shall go. 
I will. I am only a woman, and should I be 
killed, I can better be spared than any of you." 

Her brother and the rest sought vainly to 
dissuade her. Every cabin, as they pointed 
out, was now filled with Indians, who would 
almost certainly kill or capture her. But her 
mind was made up. Throwing open the door, 
she ran at utmost speed to the stockade-gate, 
while the Indians, as though stupefied by her 
audacity, stood watching her in silent wonder. 

Friendly hands grasped her, drew her into 
the fort-yard, and shut fast the gate. 
[132] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

" Powder," she whispered, to the amazed 
men and women who crowded about her, 
" give me powder, all I can carry in my apron." 

Ten minutes more and the brave young 
woman was again in the open, darting toward 
the house. Now the bullets began to fly after 
her, while the men at the port-holes blazed 
angrily back, seeking to cover her return. 
Nearer she came, steadily nearer, and still un- 
harmed. A moment more and she would be 
safe. Ebenezer Zane, working his rifle with 
desperate intensity, shouted words of loving 
encouragement. 

Again the bullets sang past her head. Not 
once faltering, Elizabeth Zane fled on, reached 
the house, and fell forward, breathless but un- 
hurt, into her brother's arms. It is good to 
be able to add that the powder secured at such 
hazard enabled the Zanes to hold out until 
relieved of all danger by the hasty retreat of 
the enemy at news that a powerful expedition 
was advancing against them. 
[133] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

But it was in Kentucky — and particularly 
against the cluster of settlements in the Blue 
Grass region, connected with the farthermost 
settlements of the East only by the thin, two- 
hundred-mile thread of the Wilderness Road — 
that the Indians delivered their deadliest 
blows. Even after the Revolution it was years 
before Kentucky — veritably a dark and bloody 
ground — became entirely free from the danger 
of Indian raids. Every little fort and station 
had its history of battle and siege, its death- 
roll of slaughtered victims. Nevertheless, 
the settlers manfully held their ground, led 
by such famous Indian fighters as Daniel 
Boone, George Rogers Clark, Benjamin Logan, 
and Simon Kenton. 

There were Indian fighters, too, among the 
women, though comparatively few of their ex- 
ploits have come down to us.^ A raid on Innis' 

* The stories that immediately follow are based on accoimts 
found in two old works, Lewis Collins* " History of Ken- 
tucky," and John A. McClung's " Sketches of Western Ad- 
venture." 

[134] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

settlement, three or four miles from Frankfort, 
was rendered memorable by the bravery of 
the wives of Jesse and Hosea Cook, two brothers 
who had imprudently built their cabin homes 
at an isolated spot. Surprised by Indians 
while shearing sheep, Jesse Cook was shot dead, 
and Hosea mortally wounded. But he man- 
aged to stagger to the cabin where his wife and 
sister-in-law then were with their infant chil- 
dren, and with his last breath called to them 
to secure the door. 

Ordinary women thus bereft would have been 
incapable of action, but the Cooks were ex- 
traordinary women. While Mrs. Hosea vainly 
sought to revive her husband, who had fallen 
just inside the entrance. Mrs. Jesse barred the 
door, which fortunately was unusually strong. 
Outside, the Indians hammered upon it, in- 
sistently demanding admittance. 

Picking up a rifle, Mrs. Jesse Cook loaded 
it, peered through a chink in the wall, and 
sighting an Indian seated on a near-by log, 
[1351 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

took careful aim and fired. The Indian leaped 
into the air with a horrible yell and fell dead, 
while his companions, threatening a fearful 
vengeance, climbed nimbly upon the cabin 
roof and set fire to it. Calling to her sister-in- 
law to hand her a bucket of water, Mrs. Jesse 
rushed up the ladder leading to the cabin attic, 
and put out the flames. Again the Indians 
kindled a blaze, and again she extinguished it. 
And so for a third time. 

More than once the Indians sent bullets 
through the cabin walls, but without doing any 
injury. Finally, afraid that if they lingered 
longer they might be surrounded by a strong 
force of settlers, they descended from the roof 
and vanished into the forest, leaving the heroic 
women to bury their dead husbands. 

Mrs. John Merrill, of Nelson County, was 
another Kentucky woman who met and over- 
came the Indian foe, by her unaided strength 
and quick wit defeating no fewer than six red 
men, if tradition speaks the truth. One night, 
[136] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

when she and her husband were alone in their 
cabin, they were awakened by a loud barking 
of their dog, and upon opening the door Mr. 
Merrill received the fire of half a dozen Indians 
who were in hiding outside. Badly, though 
not fatally wounded, he fell to the floor, while 
his wife sprang out of bed and closed the door 
just in time to shut out the whooping savages. 
She knew that it would take them only a 
few minutes to cut an entrance, ^and seizing 
an ax she made ready for a defense to the death. 
As the first Indian forced his way in through 
the narrow opening made by their tomahawks, 
she swung her ax with Amazonian strength, 
and down the Indian tumbled, dead at the 
instant. Two others she similarly killed. The 
rest then tried to enter by way of the chimney, 
but Mrs. Merrill proved herself no less resource- 
ful than courageous. Ripping open a feather 
bed she set fire to the feathers, making a furious 
blaze and dense smoke which brought down two 
Indians gasping for breath. 
[137] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

With a couple of powerful blows she des- 
patched them, and turned in time to meet the 
single surviving Indian, who had crept in un- 
noticed through the break in the door. Leaping 
at him with the fury of a wildcat, she swung 
her ax once more, laid open his cheek to the 
bone, and sent him out into the night shrieking 
dismally. Some months afterward a returned 
prisoner from the Shawnee towns brought 
word that the wounded Indian had spread 
far and wide marvelous tales of the prowess 
and ferocity of John Merrill's " long-knife 
squaw." 

Even little girls became imbued with phenom- 
enal bravery and strength in those grim years 
of warfare. One morning a Lincoln County 
pioneer named Woods, who had settled on a 
lonely heath, paid a visit to the nearest station, 
leaving at home a family consisting of his wife, 
his daughter, scarcely in her teens, and a 
crippled negro servant. 

No Indian " signs " had been seen for some 
[138] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

time, and Mr. Woods felt that all would be well 
during his absence. But toward noon his wife, 
while working in an outbuilding, saw several 
Indians running toward the house. Screaming 
loudly to give the alarm she sought to reach 
the house before them, but could not run fast 
enough to enter and close the door before the 
arrival of the nearest Indian. 

As soon as he came in, the crippled negro 
heroically grappled with him, and together 
they rolled about the floor, the negro holding 
the Indian so tightly that he could do no damage. 
But neither could the negro free a hand to kill 
him. Mrs. Woods, meanwhile, was exerting 
all her strength to keep the door closed against 
the other Indians. Seeing that she could not 
possibly come to his aid, the negro called to 
her young daughter: 

" Get that sharp ax under the bed and chop 
this man's head off." 

Trembling with nervousness, but pure grit 
in every ounce of her little body, the girl picked 
[139] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

up the ax, while the Indian, in a panic, strove 
madly to shake off his black antagonist. The 
first blow of the ax missed him completely, 
but the little girl struck again, and this time 
inflicted so severe a wound that the negro was 
able to rise and make an end of the Indian. 
At the same moment the sound of firing was 
heard outdoors. A party of white hunters 
had heard the tumult and had galloped to the 
rescue. 

By all odds the most notable display of 
female heroism during the Indian wars in 
Kentucky, however, was made in connection 
with the siege of Bryan's Station in 1782. This 
stockaded settlement had been founded three 
years previously by four brothers of that name 
from North Carolina, and stood on the North 
Fork of the Elkhorn, a few miles from Lexing- 
ton. In 1780 the original settlers had abandoned 
it, following Indian raids on neighboring 
stations, and the killing of the oldest Bryan 
brother; but it was soon re-occupied, this time 
[1401 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

by immigrants from Virginia, and at the time 
of the siege it contained twelve famihes, be- 
sides twenty-five or thirty men — scouts, hunt- 
ers, and surveyors — who were temporarily 
making it their headquarters. 

Until midsummer of 1782 it had almost 
entirely escaped attack, and its occupants 
were beginning to feel that the Indians, who 
had been comparatively quiet since an invasion 
of their country by George Rogers Clark two 
years before, would no longer menace the pros- 
perity of that part of Kentucky. But, at 
sunset of August 15, a messenger arrived with 
news that a large force of Wyandots and Shaw- 
nees had surprised and defeated a party of 
settlers from another station, and that every 
available man was expected to turn out the 
next day to hunt for, and give battle to, the 
savages. 

No one dreamed that the real object of the 
Indians in thus entering once more the Blue 
Grass region was to conquer and destroy Bry- 
[1411 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

an's Station itself, at that time the largest and 
one of the most strongly fortified stations in 
Kentucky. In blissful ignorance of the fate 
threatening them, the garrison began to make 
preparations for an early departure. In the 
overhanging, port-holed block-houses, which 
stood like many-eyed sentinels at the four 
corners of the stockade, men took down their 
rifles from the racks on the walls, filled bullet 
pouches and powder-horns, and vigorously 
sharpened their hunting-knives. In the inter- 
vening cabins, by the light of buffalo-tallow 
candles, bare-armed women molded bullets, 
prepared food, and mended clothing. Thus 
every one toiled, far into the hot summer night; 
and meantime, approaching ever closer, crept 
an army of five hundred copper-colored warriors 
headed by a British oflScer named Caldwell and 
a notorious American renegade, Simon Girty. 

Sunrise found the station on the Elkhorn 
completely surrounded by the Indians, not 
one of whom, however, was visible from the 
[142] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

stockade. Girty, never suspecting that the 
settlers were planning to march out of their 
own accord, and thus clear the way for an easy 
victory, had devised a crafty scheme to lure 
them to destruction. At his orders the main 
body of the invaders remained concealed in 
weeds, long grass, and growing corn between 
the back of the station and the river, while a 
small company was posted along the trail that 
led past the front gate of the stockade, the inten- 
tion being that they should keep hidden until 
daylight, when they were boldly to show them- 
selves. It was thought that the garrison would 
then rush out to attack them, and would pursue 
them along the trail, while their comrades at 
the same time would storm the station from 
behind. 

A few years earlier this scheme would un- 
doubtedly have proved effective. But the 
Kentuckians had learned wisdom from bitter 
experience, and, instead of blindly rushing out, 
orders were at once issued to make ready to 
[143] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

withstand a siege. More than this, a counter- 
plot was quickly formed. Ten or twelve vol- 
unteers were to be sent to engage the Indians 
on the trail, while the rest of the garrison, 
posted at the port-holes facing the river, were 
to reserve their fire until the real assault from 
the rear was made. Then the assailants were 
to be greeted with a volley which, it was not 
doubted, would greatly decimate their ranks 
and send them scurrying back to cover. 

One problem remained, and a most serious 
one. Like most of the Kentucky settlements 
of that early time, Bryan's Station depended 
for its water supply on a spring some distance 
from the stockade, the custom being for the 
women and girls to go to the spring early in 
the morning and carry in enough water to last 
through the day. In the case of Bryan's 
Station, the spring was located at the foot of 
a slope leading from the stockade to the river, 
and in the very midst of the trees and shrubs, 
cane and weeds where the Indians lay concealed. 
[144] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

Yet water the defenders must have. But how 
to obtain it? 

If a party of men went out it was certain the 
Indians would fall upon and overwhelm them. 
If, on the other hand, the women of the settle- 
ment were to make the attempt, visiting the 
spring in accordance with their daily custom, 
there was a bare possibility that they might 
not be molested if they could only deceive 
the Indians into thinking that their presence 
was still undetected. Of course, though, the 
risk would be great, and the question was would 
the women be willing to take it. 

Called together in one of the block-houses to 
discuss the situation, and being plainly in- 
formed that without water it would be hopeless 
to attempt a defense, their decision was soon 
made. Stepping forward without a moment's 
hesitation, one of them — Mrs. Jemima Suggett 
Johnson, the mother of five children, including 
the future hero of the Battle of the Thames and 
Vice-President of the United States, Richard 
H451 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

M. Johnson, then an infant peacefully slumber- 
ing in a rough-hewed cradle — put her hand 
on the shoulder of her ten-year-old daughter, 
Betsy, and said: 

" I will go for water, and my girl Betsy will 
go with me. And we shall not have to go alone." 

The half-challenge, half-invitation in her 
words was instantly accepted by the other 
women of the station. One after another they 
promised to follow her, and pledged the assist- 
ance of their daughters. From cabin to cabin 
they ran in search of water vessels, heavy 
pails for the grown women and the older girls, 
and for the younger ones little piggins and nog- 
gins with their quaint single and double up- 
right staves for handles. 

When all was in readiness the back gate 
of the stockade was opened, and out they walked 
— twenty-eight women and girls, chatting and 
laughing and singing as though they had not 
the faintest suspicion that their deadliest foes 
were hovering near. Down the sloping hill- 
[146] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

side they made their way, through the tall 
weeds and charred stumps of the clearing, 
by a path so narrow that two could not walk 
abreast. A few moments more, and they were 
lost to sight in a cane-brake high enough to give 
cover to a man on horseback. Still their 
voices rang merrily, carrying assurance to the 
anxious men in the stockade, and completely 
deceiving the Indians, who crouched lower 
in their hiding-places. 

It was a marvelous display of self-control, 
of resolute intrepidity, but it was hard indeed 
for the women and girls to keep up their show 
of unconcern. Here and there, in the cane and 
weeds and long grass, they caught the glitter 
of a rifle barrel, the tremulous quivering of a 
war feather, the gleam of an evil eye. They 
could hear a low whispering, which they rightly 
interpreted as the furtive consultation of the 
Indians, perplexedly asking one another whether 
it was not wiser to make a beginning of the 
struggle there and then. Small wonder if, as 
[1471 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

they neared the spring, the laughter of some 
died away, the voices of others grew more sub- 
dued. 

Swiftly, yet without appearance of haste, 
they bent to their task. The girls, some of 
whom were not much older than little Betsy 
Johnson, were the first to fill their piggins and 
noggins and buckets and start on the homeward 
journey. After them came the women, several, 
like Mrs. Johnson, returning with a pail in 
each hand and a third on the head. Through 
the cane they hurried back, with firm tread, 
glancing neither to the right nor to the left, 
lest, in their now intense excitement, the merest 
glimpse of a tawny form might betray one of 
them into a shriek that would bring the Indians 
upon them. And thus, with their hearts ever 
beating faster beneath their shabby linsey- 
woolsey dresses, they regained the clearing, 
passed up the hill to the stockade gate, and 
through the gate, their noble deed accomplished. 

With their return the defenders hastened 
[1481 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

into action. Each man leaped to his appointed 
post, in block-house or by stockade port-hole, 
the front gate was opened wide, and out dashed 
the squad of volunteers, blazing away at the 
Indians on the trail, who answered with a volley, 
then fled with taunting cries. After them 
sped the volunteers, firing as they ran, shout- 
ing and hallooing, and, in short, contriving to 
make as much noise as though they were half 
a hundred instead of but a dozen men. Inside 
the stockade perfect silence reigned. 

Then the expected happened. Up from the 
the grass and weeds, out from the corn 
and cane-brake, lithe, hideously-painted forms 
emerged, Girty at their head. Up the hill 
they raced, at first in a wide, semi-circular 
line, but massing together as they neared the 
gate. On they came, until every detail of 
their gaunt, malevolent features was plainly 
visible. Not until then did the cry ring out: 

"Fire!" 

With that first volley victory was practically 
[149] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

assured. When the smoke cleared, fallen 
Indians dotted the hillside, inert shapes or 
writhing horribly, while the uninjured had 
once more vanished into the thickets by the 
river. The volley, too, was the signal for the 
return of those who had sallied out to give 
sham battle to the decoy detachment. Not at 
once, to be sure, did the Indians give over the 
attempt that had begun so disastrously for 
them. Urged by Girty, they returned again 
and again to the attack, until a warning reached 
them that a powerful relief expedition had been 
raised and was on its way to the station.^ 

Such an exhibition of unflinching valor ob- 
viously presupposed innate characteristics of 
great forcefulness, and it cannot be too strongly 
emphasized that the pioneer women of the early 
West brought with them from the East qual- 
ities of the utmost importance to the welfare 

^ Colonel Durrett's " Bryant's Station," published as 
No. 12 of the Filson Club's publications, contains accounts of 
this siege by both Colonel Durrett and George W. Ranck, two 
Kentucky historians. 

[150] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

of the prosperous, progressive commonwealths 
which they assisted to upbuild. 

For the most part the early West — by which 
is meant West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ten- 
nessee—was settled from the frontiers of 
Virginia and the Carolinas, and by people of 
the so-called Scotch-Irish race. The women of 
this stock were a strong-limbed, clear-eyed folk. 
Their predominant trait was a stubborn, 
unflinching courageousness, manifest alike in 
times of great crisis, and in the ordinary vicis- 
situdes of life. 

W^en Mrs. Joseph Davies of Virginia, to 
give an illustration, broke her arm at the cross- 
ing of the Cumberland River, but continued 
on the road to Kentucky, riding her horse and 
carrying her baby as though no injury had be- 
fallen her, she but typified the innate pluck 
and determination common to the women who 
settled the West. There were no weaklings 
among them — weaklings could never have 
crossed the well-nigh trackless mountains, to 
[151] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

say nothing of withstanding the ordeals of 
the wilderness existence. 

They were, too, wonderfully self-reliant 
women, and women in whom the spirit of in- 
itiative was strongly developed, as we already 
know from our study of the border women of 
the " forgotten half -century." Many were in- 
strumental in inducing their husbands and 
sons to seek new homes in the West. 

It was thus that William Whitley, the noted 
Indian fighter, was led to settle in Kentucky. 
Reports of the remarkable fertility of the Blue 
Grass country had reached the Virginia settle- 
ment where he had always lived, and one night, 
after a hard day's work on the farm, Whitley 
remarked to his wife that if Kentucky were all 
it was painted it would pay them to remove to 
it. " Well, Billy," was her quick response, " if 
I was you, I would go and find out." In two 
days he was Westward-bound, with rifle and 
ax and plow. 

Similarly, Rebecca Boone gave a signal dis- 
[1521 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

play of the self-reliant, enterprising spirit of 
the Western women, when her husband was cap- 
tured by the Indians in 1778 and taken to 
Detroit to be put on exhibition as one of the 
most redoubtable of border fighters. Believing 
him dead, she decided to return with her chil- 
dren to the North Carolina home of her kins- 
folk, packed her belongings, loaded them on 
horses, and actually traversed without assist- 
ance the difficult and dangerous Wilderness 
Road and the equally arduous trails from Cum- 
berland Gap to the Yadkin Valley. It was 
there that Boone found her after his escape 
from captivity, and thence, willingly as ever, 
she again accompanied him to Kentucky, even 
while the Indian wars were still raging. 

The mother of Sam Houston was another 
woman who, for the sake of her children, haz- 
arded the dangers of the wilderness journey 
without the protection of a man's strong arm. 
She must have justified to the full the eulo- 
gistic description penned of her by Houston's 
[153] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

friend and biographer, C. Edwards Lester, 
who portrayed her as "an extraordinary 
woman, distinguished by an impressive and 
dignified countenance, and gifted with intellec- 
tual and moral qualities which elevated her in 
a still more striking manner above most of 
her sex." 

The death of her husband left Mrs. Houston 
in rather poor circumstances and with a grow- 
ing family of six sons and three daughters. 
Knowing that many of her neighbors who had 
gone West had prospered exceedingly, she de- 
termined to follow their example in order that 
her children might get a good start in life, sold 
her Virginia farm, and journeyed to Tennessee, 
ending her migration only when within eight 
miles of the boundary between the settlements 
of the whites and the wigwams of the Cherokees. 

There she erected a rude cabin, with the 

help of her oldest boys, and there she labored 

diligently to bring up her children to be useful 

men and women. It was for them that she 

[154] 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

toiled and prayed and denied herself, person- 
ifying in her devotion another trait of the 
mothers of the early West. 

However poor they might be, they were 
women of lofty ambitions and high ideals. 
Their huge sunbonnets and faded gowns re- 
flected only the exterior poverty of their lives; 
in their motherly love, their capacity to sym- 
pathize with the sick and suffering, their pro- 
found religious faith and noble moral principles, 
they were truly rich. 

And this is why, despite all the hardships 
and privation that attended the westward 
movement, the children of the pioneers were 
born to a goodly inheritance, if not of the things 
of this earth, assuredly of the greater blessings 
of a strong physique, a sane, healthy outlook 
on life, and a real greatness of soul. 



[155] 



CHAPTER V 

THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

THE distinctive traits of the American 
woman — her abihty to rise subhmely to 
great occasions and meet a crisis unflinchingly, 
her willingness to give the best that is in her 
for the sake of those she loves and for the noble 
cause of patriotism, and her marvelous ca- 
pacity to endure hardship, suffering, and pri- 
vation — have never been more convincingly 
revealed than in the long struggle over slavery, 
which gradually divided the nation into two 
hostile camps and at last culminated in a co- 
lossal war. 

On both sides in that terrible conflict, the 

women of the country proved themselves worthy 

descendants of the splendid matrons who had 

wrought so nobly for America in bygone times. 

[156] 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

And even in the earliest stages of the struggle, 
in the period of agitation from 1820 onward, 
when the American people were only dimly 
beginning to perceive that the presence of the 
bondsman on American soil involved problems 
which menaced the peace and welfare of the 
republic, women were to the fore in pointing 
out the path of destiny and duty. 

Anti-slavery agitation, of course, was by 
no means confined to the forty years immedi- 
ately preceding the Civil War. Protests were 
heard almost so soon as the first slaves were 
imported into the English colonies in 1619, 
and throughout the colonial period the subject 
was intermittently discussed. It formed a 
ground for heated controversy in the Constitu- 
tional Convention of 1787, and for a time 
threatened to wreck the labors of the constitu- 
tion makers. But, although the process of 
emancipating slaves steadily continued in the 
States of the North, there was no systematic 
movement looking to the abolition of slavery 
[1571 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

throughout the United States until Benjamin 
Lundy and William Lloyd Garrison began the 
crusade that speedily drew upon them the 
wrath of those who believed that the holding 
of slaves was morally, politically, and eco- 
nomically justifiable. On the other hand, from 
the moment that Garrison raised his powerful 
voice and wielded his trenchant pen in behalf 
of the slave, recruits hastened to enlist under 
the standard he had raised, and within a re- 
markably short time hundreds of ardent ad- 
vocates of universal emancipation were to be 
found in all parts of the country. 

The rapidity with which the movement 
spread may be indicated in a few sentences. 
In 1831 Garrison founded his emancipation 
newspaper, The Liberator, and within another 
twelve months a New England Anti-Slavery 
Society was established. During the next year 
subsidiary societies sprang up in so many cities 
and towns that by December, 1833, it was 
deemed advisable to organize an American 
[1581 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

Anti-Slavery Society for the purpose of uniting 
and concentrating the agitation of the entire 
country. By 1840 this central organization 
was directing the work of no fewer than two 
thousand local societies, with a membership 
of between one hundred and fifty thousand 
and two hundred thousand men and women. 
And this, be it clearly understood, despite the 
bitterest opposition in the North as well as 
in the South — an opposition that in many 
instances took the form of mob violence, in 
response to the cry of the politician and the 
pro-slavery advocate that the Union could not 
endure unless the abolitionists were silenced. 
In New York, for instance, there was a riot 
as early as October, 1833, when Clinton Hall, 
the place selected for an abolition meeting, 
was raided by opponents of the movement.^ 

1 A. B. Hart's " Slavery and Abolition," published as vol. 
xvi of the " American Nation " co^roperative history of the 
United States. This book may be recommended as giving 
an excellent modern account of the development of the ab- 
olition movement. 

[159] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

Other riots in July of the following year re- 
sulted in the sacking of the home of Lewis 
Tappan, a wealthy New York abolitionist, 
and the destruction of several other houses and 
churches. In similar riots in Philadelphia 
there was even greater damage to property, 
forty-four houses being injured or totally des- 
troyed in a single outbreak in 1834. Four 
years later, in the same city, a mob burned 
Pennsylvania Hall, a handsome structure which 
the abolitionists had erected because of the 
difficulty experienced in leasing suitable quar- 
ters for their meetings. It had been officially 
opened only three days when the mob, not- 
withstanding the pleadings of the mayor, 
broke in by a side door, started a fire, and then 
fought off the firemen sent to save the build- 
ing. 

In Boston, anti-abolition feeling rose to 

fever heat upon the arrival, in the autumn of 

1834, of a forceful English abolitionist, George 

Thompson, who came from abroad in the hope 

[1601 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

of helping Garrison arouse a more favorable 
public sentiment by the power of his remark- 
able oratory. The announcement that he 
was to speak at a meeting of the Boston Female 
Anti-Slavery Society brought out, on the morn- 
ing of the day set for the meeting, a vicious 
hand -bill that was distributed throughout the 
city. It openly incited its readers to violence, 
in these words: 

" That infamous foreign scoundrel Thomp- 
son will hold forth this afternoon at the Liberator 
office, No. 48 Washington Street. The present 
is a fair opportunity for the friends of the Union 
to snake Thompson out! It will be a contest 
between the abolitionists and the friends of 
the Union. A purse of one hundred dollars 
has been raised by a number of patriotic cit- 
izens to reward the individual who shall first 
lay violent hands on Thompson so that he 
may be brought to the tar-kettle before dark. 
Friends of the Union, be vigilant! " 

Thompson was not present at the meeting, 
[161] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

but Garrison was, and on him fell the fury of 
the mob. After wrecking the office of The 
Liberator, they tied a rope around Garrison 
and dragged him through the streets to the 
city hall, where the mayor comniitted him to 
jail, ostensibly as a " disturber of the peace," 
but in reality to save his life. A similar scene 
was enacted at Cincinnati in 1836, when the 
office of The Philanthropist was gutted, and a 
determined effort made to kill its editor, James 
G. Birney. And the next year, at Alton, 111., 
anti-abolition hatred actually culminated in 
murder, Elijah P. Lovejoy, the editor of a little 
abolition paper, being deliberately shot down 
by a mob, twelve of whom were afterward 
tried for the crime but acquitted after only ten 
minutes' deliberation by the jury. 

In spite of all this — perhaps partly on 
account of it, for persecution has always 
strengthened worthy causes — the abolition 
movement, as was said, grew apace, being 
carried forward by an ever increasing army 
[162] 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

of enthusiasts, both men and women. Women, 
indeed, were among the most earnest, eloquent 
and indefatigable champions of emancipation. 
They formed societies of their own — chief 
among which was the already mentioned Bos- 
ton Female Anti-Slavery Society, of whose 
leading spirit, Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman, 
the gifted and beautiful wife of a wealthy Boston 
merchant, it has been said that she was " second 
to none in her lieutenancy to Garrison, the 
captain of the great reform " — and at the 
cost of no matter what personal sacrifice they 
labored to promote a cause which appealed to 
their profoundest moral instincts. 

Strange as it may seem, the two women who 
were especially prominent at the time when 
abolition was most in disfavor — from 1833 to 
1840 — were Southerners, Sarah and Angelina 
Grimke, the daughters of Judge John F. 
Grimke, of Charleston, one of the most in- 
fluential men in South Carolina. That South- 
ern women generally did not sympathize with 
[163] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

the emancipation movement is not at all sur- 
prising, neither is it to their discredit. Like 
the men of the South, they had been brought 
up to consider slavery a fixed and necessary 
institution; they saw little or nothing of its 
worst side, and they were disposed to re- 
gard the condition of the negro in slavery as 
infinitely better than would be his lot were he 
liberated and compelled to shift for himself. 
To put it otherwise, training and environment 
alike constrained the Southern women to 
look at the question from a point of view dif- 
fering radically from that of the women of the 
North. 

But Sarah and Angelina Grimke, notwith- 
standing that they were born into a family of 
slaveholders, and at one time owned slaves 
of their own, seem to have viewed slavery 
with abhorrence from early youth. " Slavery," 
wrote Sarah, " was a millstone about my neck, 
and marred my comfort from the time I can 
remember myself." They left home and re- 
[164] 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

moved to Philadelphia, where they joined the 
Quakers, and where, in 1836, Angelina, the 
younger but the more talented of the two sis- 
ters, wrote a pamphlet entitled " An Appeal 
to the Christian Women of the South." It 
was a vigorous anti-slavery document, and 
caused a tremendous sensation. The profound 
impression it made on abolitionists may be 
judged from a letter written to its author by 
Elizur Wright, then secretary of the American 
Anti-Slavery Society. 

" I have just finished reading your Appeal, 
and not with a dry eye," wrote Mr. Wright. 
" Oh, that it could be rained down into every 
parlor in our land. I know it will carry the 
Christian women of the South if it can be 
read, and my soul blesses that dear and glo- 
rious Saviour who has helped you to write it." 

And, according to Catherine H. Birney, 

the biographer of the Grimke sisters, Mr. 

Wright also spoke of it as "a patch of blue 

sky breaking through the storm-cloud of public 

[1651 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

indignation which had gathered so black over 
the handful of anti-slavery workers." 

Published as an official pamphlet of the 
American Anti-Slavery Society, the " Appeal " 
was sent broadcast through the land, and es- 
pecially through the South. Of its reception 
in Miss Grimke's native State, and of the in- 
dignation it stirred up against her, an inter- 
esting contemporary account is in existence, 
written by the man whom she afterwards 
married, the abolitionist Theodore Weld: 

" When it came out, a large number of 
copies were sent by mail to South Carolina. 
Most of them were publicly burned by post- 
masters. Not long after this, the city authci- 
ities of Charleston learned that Miss Grimke 
was intending to visit her mother and sisters, 
and pass the winter with them. Thereupon 
the mayor called upon Mrs. Grimke and de- 
sired her to inform her daughter that the 
police had been instructed to prevent her 
landing while the steamer remained in port, 
[166] 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

and to see to it that she should not communi- 
cate, by letter or otherwise, with any persons 
in the city; and, further, that if she should 
elude their vigilance and go on shore, she would 
be arrested and imprisoned until the return of 
the vessel. 

" Her Charleston friends at once conveyed 
to her the message of the mayor, and added 
that the people of Charleston were so incensed 
against her that if she should go there despite 
the mayor's threat of pains and penalties, she 
could not escape personal violence at the hands 
of the mob. She replied to the letter that her 
going would probably compromise her family, 
not only distress them, but put them in peril; 
which she had neither heart nor right to do; 
but for that fact, she would certainly exercise 
her constitutional right as an American cit- 
izen, and go to Charleston to visit her relatives, 
and if for that the authorities should inflict 
upon her pains and penalties, she would willingly 
bear them, assured that such an outrage would 
[167] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

help to reveal to the free States the fact that 
slavery defies and tramples alike upon consti- 
tutions and laws, and thus outlaws itself." ^ 

Thenceforward both sisters became active 
workers in behalf of abolition, laboring for the 
great cause by word of mouth as well as by 
word of pen. In fact, it was as speakers that 
they embarked on their joint crusade, when, 
a few months after the publication of the " Ap- 
peal," they accepted an invitation from the 
American Anti-Slavery Society to visit New 
York and lecture on slavery as they had seen 
it in South Carolina. 

At the time it was not customary for women 
to take the platform at public gatherings, 
and accordingly the Grimkes held their meet- 
ings in private, and admitted only their own 
sex. But those who attended carried home 
such glowing reports, particularly of Angelina 
Grimke's eloquence, that men began to slip 
in quietly to hear them, and soon their lectures 

1 Catherine H. Bimey's " The Sisters Grimke," pp. 149-150. 

[168] 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

became public in the fullest sense. Bitter 
opposition at once developed, some Congrega- 
tional clergymen of Massachusetts taking the 
lead in denouncing " women preachers." But 
the Grimkes valiantly persevered, with the 
result of gradually forcing public acquiescence 
in the right of women to free speech. They 
spoke throughout the Eastern States, and so 
large did their audiences become that it often 
was necessary to hold overflow meetings in a 
separate hall, Sarah Grimke addressing one 
meeting while Angelina was addressing an- 
other. 

" At one place," says their biographer, 
" where over a thousand people crowded into 
a church, one of the joists gave way; it was 
propped up, but soon others began to crack, 
and, although the people were warned to leave 
that part of the building, only a few obeyed, 
and it was found impossible to persuade them 
to go, or to consent to have the speaking 
stopped. 

[1691 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

" At another place ladders were put up at 
all the windows, and men crowded upon them, 
and tenaciously held their uncomfortable po- 
sitions through the whole meeting. In one 
or two places they were refused a meeting- 
house, on account of strong sectarian feeling 
against them as Quakers. At Worcester they 
had to adjourn from a large Congregational 
church to a small Methodist one, because the 
clergyman of the former suddenly returned from 
an absence, and declared that if they spoke in 
his church he would never enter it again. 

" At Bolton, notices of their meetings were 
torn down, but the town hall was packed not- 
withstanding, many going away, unable to 
get in. The church here had also been refused 
them. Angelina, in the course of her lecture, 
seized an opportunity to refer to their treatment, 
saying that if the people of her native city 
could see her lecturing in that hall because 
every church had been closed against the 
cause of God's down-trodden creatures, they 
[1701 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

would clap their hands for joy, and say : * See 
what slavery is doing for us in the town of 
Bolton.' " 

Like most abolitionists of the period, they 
had some thrilling experiences. More than 
once they were attacked by angry crowds, 
armed with sticks, stones, and rotten eggs. 
They were witnesses of the burning of Pennsyl- 
vania Hall. In fact, the night before the burn- 
ing, Angehna — who had been married to Mr. 
Weld just three days previously — addressed a 
crowded audience in the doomed edifice, while 
a mob raged outside, shouting, jeering, and 
hurling stones through the windows. 

*' With deep solemnity," we are told, " and 
in words of burning eloquence, she gave her 
testimony against the awful wickedness of 
an institution which had no secrets from her. 
She was frequently interrupted by the mob, 
but their yells and shouts only furnished her 
with metaphors which she used with unshrink- 
ing power. More stones were thrown at the 
[1711 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

windows, more glass crashed, but she only 
paused to ask: 

" ' What is a mob? What would the break- 
ing of every window be? Any evidence that 
we are wrong, or that slavery is a good and 
wholesome institution? What if that mob 
should now burst in upon us, break up our 
meeting, and commit violence upon our per- 
sons — would this be anything compared with 
what the slaves endure? No, no; and we do 
not remember them ** as bound with them " if 
we shrink in the time of peril, or feel unwilling 
to sacrifice ourselves, if need be, for their 
sake. . . .' 

" Here a shower of stones was thrown through 
the windows, and there was some disturbance 
in the audience, but quiet was again restored, 
and Angelina proceeded, and spoke for over 
an hour, making no further reference to the 
noise without, and only showing that she no- 
ticed it by raising her own voice so that it 
could be heard throughout the hall. Not once 
[1721 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

was a tremor or change of color perceptible, 
and though the missiles continued to fly through 
the broken sashes, and the hootings and yellings 
increased outside, so powerfully did her words 
and tones hold that vast audience that, im- 
minent as seemed their peril, scarcely a man 
or woman moved to depart. She sat down amid 
applause that drowned all the noise outside." ^ 

This was her last appearance in public. 
Soon afterward she had an accident that so 
severely injured her nervous system as to make 
retirement to private life inevitable; and in her 
withdrawal from the arena of public agitation 
and controversy she was accompanied by her 
sister. 

Compared with other advocates of abolition, 
theirs was a brief career; but while it lasted 
it was meteoric, and contemporary judgment 
is unanimous as to its influence in shaping pub- 
lic opinion. Moreover, too much credit cannot 
be given the sisters for the sacrifice they made 

1 Catherine H. Bimey's "The Sisters Grimke," pp. 240-241. 

[173] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

in renouncing for all time the happiness and 
advantages of their luxurious Southern home. 
It may be added that both lived to see the 
dream of their youth realized and the negro 
set free, Sarah Grimke living until 1873, and 
Angelina until 1879. 

Another woman who made a very real sac- 
rifice in championing the slave was Mrs. Lydia 
Maria Child. Perhaps no other sacrificed so 
much. Unlike Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose 
" Uncle Tom's Cabin " — published at a far later 
day, when abolition had become more popular 
— was the making of her literary reputation, 
Mrs. Child's hopes and plans as a writer were 
irretrievably ruined by her advocacy of freedom 
for the negro. She was easily the favorite 
authoress of the day up to the time she brought 
out her " Appeal in Favor of that Class of 
American called Africans." In speaking of 
her work even the conservative North American 
Review said: 

" We are not sure that any woman of our 
[174] 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

country could outrank Mrs. Child. This lady 
has been before the public as an author with 
much success. And she well deserves it, for 
in all her works nothing can be found which 
does not commend itself by its tone of healthy 
morality and good sense. Few female writers 
if any have done more or better things for our 
literature in the lighter or graver depart- 
ments." 

Wherever in the Union books were read, she 
commanded an enthusiastic following. But 
the moment her " Appeal " was issued, the 
market was closed against her writings, and 
obloquy took the place of adulation. 

In the preface to the " Appeal " occurs a 
pathetic little passage which shows how clearly 
Mrs. Child appreciated the penalty she would 
have to pay. " Should it be the means," she 
bravely wrote, " of advancing even one single 
step the inevitable progress of truth and jus- 
tice, I would not exchange that consciousness 
for all of Rothschild's wealth or Sir Walter's 
[175] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

fame." There were indeed those to whom the 
" Appeal " came with convincing force. John 
A. Andrew, afterward the celebrated war 
governor of Massachusetts, bought it, wept over 
it, and gave it to his sisters to read. Samuel 
J. May, who became one of abolition's stanch- 
est supporters, testified publicly that it made 
an abolitionist of him. *' After reading it," 
said he, " I could not be anything but an abo- 
litionist." 

Mrs. Child herself, having taken the first 
and most difficult step, entered enthusiastic- 
ally into the struggle to promote the spread 
of abolition ideas. For a while she edited the 
National Anti-Slavery Standard, and under her 
direction it became an increasingly vigorous 
organ. Besides which, innumerable pamphlets 
and articles contributed to other periodicals 
testify to the energy with which she worked. 

To the end of her long and useful life she 
retained a particularly warm spot in her heart 
for " the oppressed African." In 1864, the 
[176] 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

waning of anti-abolition prejudice in the North 
having allowed her to regain in some measure 
her former popularity as an author, she pub- 
lished a book, " Looking Toward Sunset," 
designed, as she put it, " to present old people 
with something cheerful." It was issued during 
the holiday season and proved unexpectedly 
successful, four thousand copies being sold 
within a very short time. Although by no 
means a woman of wealth, Mrs. Child is said 
to have devoted every penny of the profits to 
the freed negroes of the South, sending four 
hundred dollars as a first instalment.^ Besides 
this, she prepared a volume, " The Freedman's 
Book," which she published at her own ex- 
pense, and of which she gave twelve hundred 
copies to the freedm_en. The story is also told 
that she once sent Wendell Phillips a cheque 
for one hundred dollars for the freedmen's 
fund, and on his protesting that, as he well knew, 

1 S. C. Beach's " Daughters of the Puritans." This work 
contains several excellent biographical sketches of notable 
American women of the Civil War period. 

[177] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

she could not afford to give such a sum, re- 
sponded by insisting on doubhng the amount 
of her contribution. As still further indicating 
the intensity of her devotion to the cause of 
the negro, a passage may well be quoted from 
a letter written by her to a friend during the 
Civil War: 

" Every string that I can get sight of I pull 
for poor Sambo. I write to the Tribune about 
him; I write to the Transcript about him; I 
write to private individuals about him; and 
I write to the President and members of Con- 
gress about him; I write to Western Virginia 
and Missouri about him; and I get the articles 
published too. This shows what progress the 
cause of freedom is making." 

Most of the women, however, who attained 
distinction as pioneers in the movement to 
set free the slaves, carried on their propaganda 
from the public platform rather than from the 
quiet of the library or editorial sanctum. It 
was thus with Lucretia Mott, Abby Foster, 
[178] 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

and Sallie Holley, who were three of the most 
conspicuous standard-bearers of emancipation. 
Mrs. Mott was an abolitionist even before 
Garrison entered the hsts, having been a reader 
of Benjamin Lundy's newspaper, The Genius 
of Universal Emancipation, ahnost from its 
start in 1821. She was a Pennsylvania Quaker, 
and a woman of great eloquence. Some idea 
of the ardor with which she devoted herself 
to abolition may be gathered from the fact 
that in a single tour she traveled more than 
twenty-four hundred miles, mostly by stage- 
coach, and spoke at seventy -four meetings. 
Mrs. Foster, better known to her own gen- 
eration as Abby Kelley, was another member 
of the Society of Friends, that religious body 
which, since the days of the unfortunate Mary 
Dyer, has done much to advance ideals of 
freedom in America. She was the first woman, 
after the Grimke sisters and Mrs. Mott, to 
enter the field as an anti-slavery lecturer; and 
she was a familiar figure on abolition platforms 
[179] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, 
and Ohio, playing a particularly prominent 
role in the organization of the Western Anti- 
Slavery Society. 

Sallie Holley was the daughter of Myron 
Holley, the New York reformer who was one 
of the principal originators of the Liberty party, 
the forerunner of the Republican party. Bom 
in 1818, she was too young to take part in 
the abolition crusade during its stormiest days, 
but from 1850 onward she was an indefatigable 
worker in the ranks of the Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, having become interested in the eman- 
cipation movement while a student at Oberlin 
College. Nor did her interest in the negro 
cease with his complete emancipation. After 
the Civil War she removed to Virginia, and, 
in conjunction with Carolina Putnam, also 
a veteran abolitionist, opened a school for 
colored children. 

The reception she met from the former slave- 
holders of the vicinity was in striking contrast 
flSOl 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

with that accorded another woman, Prudence 
Crandall, who, some years before, attempted 
to conduct a similar institution not in the 
South but in one of the " free " States of the 
North. Her story forms one of the most pa- 
thetic chapters in the history of early anti- 
slavery days. 

She was a Connecticut woman, a resident 
of the town of Canterbury, where, in 1832, 
she established a girls' school. From the start 
it promised to be a great success, being patron- 
ized by Canterbury's leading citizens. One 
day a young colored girl applied for admission, 
explaining that she wished to fit herself to 
teach the neglected children of her race. She 
was promptly received, and as promptly the 
parents of the white pupils informed Miss 
Crandall that they would withdraw their 
daughters if she did not dismiss the colored 
girl. 

Refusing to do this, she soon found herself 
the mistress of an empty school. Now, for 
[181] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

the first time, she began to appreciate the dif- 
ficulties in the way of every negro, free or en- 
slaved, who sought an education; and she 
determined henceforth to do her part toward 
meeting what she felt to be a very real need. 
Advertising in Garrison's Liberator that she 
was about to open a school at Canterbury " for 
young ladies and little misses of color," she was 
before long giving instruction to twenty col- 
ored girls from New York, Philadelphia, Bos- 
ton, and Providence. 

Their arrival caused a lively commotion, 
and a deputation of prominent residents 
waited upon Miss Crandall to protest formally 
against having a " nigger school " planted 
in their midst. But she quietly replied that 
she was only doing her duty, and intended to 
continue doing it. Then began a campaign 
of bitter and unrelenting persecution. Trades- 
men refused to supply her with provisions, 
former " friends " crossed the street to avoid 
speaking to her, she and her pupils were hooted 
[182] 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

at whenever they appeared in pubhc. It was 
a whole town against one friendless woman. 
Still she refused to surrender. In despair, the 
people of Canterbury appealed to the Connecti- 
cut legislature for aid, and actually succeeded 
in securing the enactment of a law forbidding 
the establishment of any school for colored 
persons not inhabitants of the State, unless 
first written permission were obtained from the 
selectmen of the town where such a school 
was to be located. 

This law, though general in its terms, was 
aimed directly at Miss Crandall, and she was 
forthwith arrested and hurried to jail, being 
thrown into a cell that had just been vacated by 
a condemned murderer. News of the outrage 
quickly spread, and a wealthy New Yorker, 
fired with indignation, subscribed a large sum 
for her defense. When put on trial the jury 
disagreed, but her persecutors were merciless, 
and a second trial resulted in a verdict of guilty. 
An appeal was at once taken to the Supreme 
[1831 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

Court, whose members, to their everlasting 
credit, refused to sustain the conviction. Mean- 
while lawlessness had succeeded where legal 
measures failed, a mob armed with clubs and 
iron bars breaking into the school and almost 
completely demolishing it. Realizing that it 
was useless to keep up the struggle, and being 
without further means. Miss Crandall reluc- 
tantly abandoned her philanthropic undertaking 
and left Canterbury.^ 

The spirit of unreasoning, savage animosity 
which thus manifested itself was in evidence 
everywhere until about 1840, when the growing 
gulf between North and South was appreciably 
widened by the conflict over the annexation 
of Texas. Thereafter the people of the North 
viewed with steadily decreasing rancor and 
bitterness those who insistently demanded the 
emancipation of the slave. By 1850 it required 
only some unusual stimulus to provoke a pop- 

1 A more detailed account of Miss Crandall's experiences 
will be found in John C. Kimball's " Connecticut's Canter- 
bury Tale," published, as a pamphlet, at Hartford in 1886. 

[184] 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

ular upheaval along the lines of abolition teach- 
ings ; and such a stimulus, as everybody knows, 
was provided by the passage of the Fugitive 
Slave Law. Fast on its heels, and appearing 
at precisely the moment to produce the great- 
est effect, came " Uncle Tom's Cabin," with 
its heartrending pictures of the life of the slave. 

There can be no question that with this 
single volume the daughter of Lyman Beecher 
accomplished more than had any or all of 
her predecessors — the Grimke sisters, Mrs. 
Child, Mrs. Mott, and their greatly sacrificing, 
greatly daring fellow-workers. They, however 
had prepared the way. Had it not been for 
their preliminary labors, " Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
in spite of all its inherent power and interest, 
would have been given scant attention. As 
it was, it became epoch-making. 

Tn vain the people of the South protested 
that it grossly maligned them, and that it con- 
veyed a wildly distorted idea of the conditions 
of slavery. The people of the North brushed 
[185] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

their protests aside, and insisted on accepting 
Mrs. Stowe's book at face value. Within 
three weeks of publication twenty thousand 
copies were sold, and within three months 
the sales had risen to eighty thousand. Before 
the year was out eighteen English editions 
were on the market, and Harriet Beecher 
Stowe's fame had become world-wide. 

The work of a woman, " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin " made an especial appeal to women. 
It found its way into hundreds of thousands 
of homes, not merely in the larger cities and 
towns but in remote and isolated hamlets where 
the cry of the abohtionist had never penetrated. 
Among Northern women it both extended and 
intensified anti-slavery sentiment, and it helped 
them to contemplate the coming crisis with 
equanimity and determination. 

Once the crisis had actually been reached, 

with the firing on Fort Sumter, they did not 

need any incentive other than love of country 

to inspire them to an instantaneous and effect- 

[186] 



THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY 

ive response. Like the women of the Revolu- 
tion, one hundred years before, they bade 
their husbands and sons and brothers go forth 
and fight; and, having started them on the 
journey from which so many were never to re- 
turn, they bravely set to work, in a thousand 
different ways, to strengthen and sustain 
them. 



[187] 



CHAPTER VI 

woman's work in the civil war 

THE Reverend Henry W. Bellows, head of 
the United States Sanitary Commission 
which did such excellent work throughout the 
Civil War, did not exaggerate when he de- 
clared that as soon as a resort to arms became 
inevitable there was no more general uprising 
among the men of the Northern States than 
among the women. Soldiers' aid societies 
sprang up simultaneously with the enlisting 
of troops in every city, town, and village, the 
distinction of having been the first to organize 
for systematic work in behalf of the army fall- 
ing to the women of Bridgeport, Connecticut, 
and Charlestown, Massachusetts, where, on 
April 15, 1861, the day on which the President's 
[188] 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

call for troops was issued, the women of those 
cities formed societies for the purpose of afford- 
ing relief and comfort to the volunteers. 

A few days later similar societies were formed 
in the Ohio city of Cleveland and in Lowell, 
Massachusetts; and within ten days after the 
call for troops, so clearly and readily was the 
need for united effort appreciated, the Woman's 
Central Association of Relief was organized in 
New York, to guide and supervise the labors of 
all local aid societies. After a time this associ- 
ation became subsidiary to the Sanitary Com- 
mission, with branches established in all the 
larger cities and managed almost without ex- 
ception by women.i ^'hen it is said that these 
branches and the different minor organizations 

1 " Among the numerous and devoted women who labored 
in the forming and 'directing of these auxiliaries," says Doctor 
Bellows, in his account of the Sanitary Commission, it 
may be allowed without invidiousness to name Miss May 
and Miss Stevenson at Boston, Miss Collins and Miss Schuy- 
ler at New York, Mrs. Grier and Mrs. Moore at Philadelphia 
Mrs. Rouse and Miss Brayton at Cleveland, Miss Campbell 
at Detroit, and Mrs. Hedge and Mrs. Livermore at Chicago. 
[189] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

collected and distributed money and supplies 
amounting in value to more than fifty million 
dollars, the magnitude of woman's work in the 
Civil War will be better understood. 

The Sanitary Commission itself was essen- 
tially the product of woman's enterprise. It 
was established by the Government in response 
to a petition presented by a committee of the 
Woman's Central Association of Relief, the 
idea being to maintain careful oversight of 
the health of the United States forces by 
means of " a scientific board, to be commissioned 
with ample powers for visiting all camps and 
hospitals, advising, recommending, and, if 
need be, enforcing the best-known and most 
approved sanitary regulations in the army." 
As finally organized, it became the great 
national channel through w^hich the women of 
the North worked with the Government in 
promoting the war. 

Nothing was left undone to achieve its 
great aim of maintaining the soldiers' health. 
[190] 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

It established depots for the receiving of sup- 
plies of clothing, medicine, and delicacies for 
the camps and hospitals, and for forwarding 
them promptly to the points where they were 
most needed. It employed experts to coop- 
erate with the regimental surgeons in choosing 
sites for camps, regulating the drainage, and 
inspecting the cooking. It fitted up hospital 
steamers on the Mississippi, and established 
a system of soldiers' refuges, where the sick 
and convalescent would receive the best of 
care on their way home from the front. 

Wherever the army went, officers and help- 
ers of the Sanitary Commission followed, with 
wagons, food, medical supplies, and nurses 
for the care of the wounded. Perhaps its most 
notable service in the field was rendered after 
the battle of Antietam, when the train carry- 
ing the regular medical stores of the army was 
blocked near Baltimore. For four days the 
ten thousand wounded at this great battle 
had as their only means of relief the provisions 
[1911 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

of the Sanitary Commission, whose wagons 
were quickly on the battle-ground, so well 
equipped that they were able to provide over 
twenty-eight thousand shirts, towels, pillows, 
etc.; thirty barrels of lint and bandages, three 
thousand pounds of farina, two thousand pounds 
of condensed milk, five thousand pounds of 
beef stock and canned meats, three thousand 
bottles of wine, several tons of lemons, and an 
abundance of crackers, tea, sugar, rubber cloth, 
tin cups, and other necessaries. In the whole 
course of the war, it has been estimated, the 
Sanitary Commission furnished four million 
five hundred thousand meals to sick and 
wounded soldiers. And all this, bear in mind, 
was rendered possible through the tireless 
devotion of the women of the Union. 

It is out of the question to attempt to depict 
in adequate language the spirit of sacrifice 
and patriotism that animated those who, worl:- 
ing in groups or as individuals, contributed so 
nobly to the common cause. Many a woman, 
fl921 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

obliged to toil all day to earn her livelihood, 
sat up until late into the night, for months 
together, making bandages and shirts and socks 
for the boys in blue. Others who had no money 
to contribute, cheerfully surrendered precious 
heirlooms to swell the relief fund. In numerous 
instances women denied themselves meat and 
tea and sugar in order to be able to give some- 
thing to the army — something that might, 
who could tell, save a wounded soldier's life, 
or make his last moments comfortable. 

Even the aged and infirm vied in generous 
rivalry with the young and strong. In many 
barrels of hospital clothing, socks were found 
having inscriptions like the following: "The 
fortunate owner of these socks is secretly in- 
formed that they are the one hundred and 
ninety-first pair knit for our brave boys by 
Mrs. Abner Bartlett, of Medford, Massachu- 
setts, now aged eighty -five years." A home- 
spun blanket was ticketed: "This blanket 
was carried by Milly Aldrich, who is ninety- 
[193] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

three years old, down-hill and up-hill, one 
and a half miles, to be given to some sol- 
dier." 

Innumerable anecdotes might be related 
illustrative of this universal eagerness to do 
and give for country's sake. In a lonely and 
mountainous New England farming section 
lived a widow and two daughters who, although 
desperately poor, were resolved that nothing 
should prevent them from aiding in the relief 
work. They learned that at the county-seat, 
twelve miles away, a depot had been opened 
where women might obtain material to make 
into hospital clothing. Borrowing a neighbor's 
horse, they drove to town by an almost im- 
passable road, secured some cloth, and hastened 
home. Two weeks later they were back for a 
fresh supply; and thus they came and went, 
regularly once a fortnight. Anxious to ascer- 
tain the secret of their zeal, the manager of the 
local Relief Association drew the daughters 
aside one day and asked them: 
[194] 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

" I suppose you have a relative in the war 
— your father, or a brother? " 

" No," they answered, " not now. Our only 
brother fell at Ball's Bluff." 

" Then," said the manager, " why do you 
feel so deep an interest in this work? " 

" Our country's cause," came the reply, 
** is the cause of God, and we would do what 
we can for His sake." 

Another impressive incident, made public by 
Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, of the Northwestern 
Branch of the Sanitary Commission, affords 
convincing proof of the determination with 
which women, no matter how unfavorably 
situated, contrived to give effect to their 
patriotic impulse. 

" Some farmers' wives living in the north 
of Wisconsin, eighteen miles from a railroad," 
said Mrs. Livermore, in telling the story, " had 
given to the Commission of their bed and table- 
linen, their husbands' shirts and drawers, their 
scanty supply of dried and canned fruits, till 
[195] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

they had exhausted their abihty to do more in 
this direction. Still they were not satisfied. 
So they cast about to see what could be done 
in another way. They were all the wives of 
small farmers, lately moved to the West, all 
living in log cabins, where one room sufficed 
for kitchen, parlor, laundry, nursery, and bed- 
room, doing their own housework, sewing, 
baby-tending, dairy-work, and all. What could 
they do.^ 

*' They were not long in devising a way to 
gratify the longings of their motherly and 
patriotic hearts, and instantly set about carry- 
ing it into action. They resolved to beg wheat 
of the neighboring farmers, and convert it 
into money. Sometimes on foot, and some- 
times with a team, amid the snows and mud 
of early spring, they canvassed the country 
for twenty and twenty-five miles around, 
everywhere eloquently pleading the needs of 
the blue-coated soldier boys in the hospitals, 
their eloquence everywhere acting as an open 
[196 J 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

sesame to the granaries. Thus they labored 
till they had accumulated nearly five hundred 
bushels of wheat. This they sent to market, 
obtained the highest market-price for it, and 
forwarded the proceeds to the Commission. 
As we held this hard-earned money in our hands, 
we felt that it was consecrated, that the holy 
purpose and resolution of these noble women 
had imparted a sacredness to it." 

The holding of gigantic fairs was another 
means by which the women of the North raised 
money to carry on relief work among the sol- 
diers. In this they followed the example set 
by the early abolition women, particularly of 
Boston and other New England cities, whose 
annual " anti-slavery fairs " are memorable 
as having brought to America many articles 
that had never before been imported — rare 
Honiton laces, magnificent Paisley shawls, 
fine porcelain figures, costly Swiss carvings, 
and much else contributed by foreign sym- 
pathizers. But where the " anti-slavery fairs " 
[197] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

had raised one dollar, the " soldiers' aid fairs " 
raised a hundred, so vast was the scale on 
which they were conducted, and so generous 
the response. 

The first of these fairs was held in Chicago, 
where the women of that city hoped to raise 
by it a contribution of twenty-five thousand 
dollars. The proceeds enabled them to send 
to the Sanitary Commission three times that 
amount. The women of Cincinnati at once 
followed with a fair by which they proposed 
to raise two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, 
and they did it. More than a million dollars 
was raised by fairs in New York and Brooklyn, 
and another million by a fair in Philadelphia. 
Altogether upwards of five million dollars was 
added in this way to the resources of the San- 
itary Commission. 

Besides the fairs, the women of many cities 

interested themselves in the establishment 

and maintenance of soldiers' hospitals and 

** homes," while in Philadelphia a unique chan- 

[198] 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

nel for patriotic enterprise was found in the 
so-called " refreshment saloons," where sol- 
diers passing through the city were given meals. 
There were two of these saloons, both being 
in the vicinity of the navy yard, and whenever 
a regiment reached Philadelphia a cannon was 
fired. At the signal, whether it came in the 
daytime or in the middle of the night, scores of 
women hastened to the saloons to prepare and 
distribute food. More than six hundred thou- 
sand meals were served at one saloon, and four 
hundred thousand at the other. Both had 
hospitals attached to them for sick and wounded 
soldiers. Mrs. Eliza Plummer, a widow who 
turned her home into a soldiers' hospital, Mrs. 
William M. Cooper, Mrs. Sarah Ewing, Mrs. 
Elizabeth Vansdale, Miss Anna M. Ross, Mrs. 
Mary Wade, Mrs. Ellen Lowry, Mrs. Margaret 
Boyer, and Mrs. Priscilla Grover were among 
the women most prominent in this work. 

The manner in which they cared for the 
soldiers who came to their " saloons " is quaintly 
[1991 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

depicted in Doctor James Moore's " History 
of the Cooper Shop Volunteer Refreshment 
Saloon," a now little known volume published 
almost immediately after the close of the war: 

" In the extensive area of the Cooper Shop 
were placed six tables, of which, with a space 
between their ends, but in a continuous line, 
three ran the entire length of the saloon. On 
the left side, in like manner, ran two tables 
two-thirds the length of the saloon, while on 
the right of the entrance was a table for the 
officers. The room was strictly clean and tidy, 
and every article shone by the careful hands of 
the active housekeepers who ministered to 
our braves. In the extensive fire-place was a 
huge boiler for preparing the coffee, one for 
boiling hams, etc., and all the required utensils 
of the culinary art. 

" While the vegetables were cooking, and 

the viands preparing, each table was laid with 

a clean white linen cloth, on which were arranged 

plates of white stone china, mugs of the same, 

[2001 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

knives and forks, castors, and all that was nec- 
essary to table use. Bouquets of flowers, the 
gifts of visitors, were frequently added, and 
lent their fragrance to the savory odors. The 
bill of fare consisted of the best the market 
could supply, and was not, in the articles 
provided, inferior to that of any hotel in the 
country. At all meals the fare was abundant; 
consisting of ham, corned beef, Bologna sau- 
sage, bread made of the finest wheat, butter 
of the best quality, cheese, pickles, dried beef, 
coffee and tea, and vegetables. 

" The ladies were always in attendance. 
The viands were placed in dishes on a side- 
table, from which due distribution was made. 
In a word, when all was ready, the commanding 
oflScer being notified, the men formed in line 
at the ready word of command, and the hardy 
veterans, whose heroic valor never hesitated 
to obey the strictest order, marched, in all the 
order of dress parade, to the well-supplied table, 
and, deploying to the right and left, took their 
[2011 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

stand, each in his place, before the table, and 
partook of the meal so invitingly spread before 
them. 

" The committee, constantly anticipating 
their wants, produced a fresh supply of what- 
ever was required, and, in the words of Homer, 
* No desire was unfulfilled in the well-propor- 
tioned banquet.' Meanwhile, the officers at 
another table partook of the fare thus pro- 
vided. The renewed vigor imparted by timely 
nourishment enabled them to proceed refreshed 
in mind and body. When one table was served, 
another was prepared, and none were sent 
away empty." 

Then, too, there was the noble army of 
nurses, that heroic and devoted band of women 
who, conquering their instinctive horror of 
warfare and bloodshed, ministered to the 
stricken soldier, often amid the thunderous 
crashing of shot and shell. In the military 
hospital, on the trains and boats transporting 
the wounded, in tents by the side of the road 
[2021 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

that led to the battle-field, and on the battle- 
field itself, they were to be found — black- 
robed and gentle-faced Sisters of Mercy, daugh- 
ters of the rich and of the poor, widows, school- 
teachers, farmers' wives — all coming together 
with but one thought, the relief of suffering. 

It was difficult work, arduous, dangerous 
work, but there was no lack of volunteers. 
From the moment the Woman's Central As- 
sociation of Relief was organized, it was flooded 
by hundreds of applications from women eager 
to serve. The difficulty was not to secure 
nurses, but to select only those best fitted to 
stand the terrific strain they would have to 
undergo. Confronted by this problem, the 
United States Government, as every American 
woman should remember with a thrill of pride, 
solved it by entrusting the task of selection 
to a woman — Dorothea L. Dix. 

As the sequel proved, a better decision 
could not have been reached. Miss Dix was 
a keen judge of human nature, and a woman 
[2031 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

of rare executive ability, with a remarkable 
talent for mastering details. She was a born 
philanthropist, and had all her life been en- 
gaged in good works for the sick, the suffering, 
and the oppressed, with results perhaps un- 
equaled by any other individual reformer in 
the history of the United States. While still 
a very young woman, living in Boston, a con- 
versation which she chanced to overhear in 
the street drew her attention to the deplorable 
condition of the convicts in the State prison 
at Charlestown. This led her to investigate 
Massachusetts' public institutions in general, 
and she discovered such urgent need for re- 
forms that she set herself to awaken the popular 
conscience and compel the legislature to enact 
laws insuring better treatment of the State's 
prisoners, paupers, and insane. Having gained 
her end in Massachusetts, she started on a 
similar campaign in other States, touring al- 
most the entire country, visiting prisons, alms- 
houses, and asylums, unsparingly revealing 
[204] 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

the abuses she found, and bringing about 
much amehorative legislation. 

Her reformative zeal even carried her to 
foreign parts. In Rome, the Pope expressed 
his admiration and gratitude that she, " a 
woman and a Protestant, had crossed the seas 
to call his attention to these cruelly ill-treated 
members of his flock." The safeguarding of 
the lives of sailors was another problem that 
aroused her sympathetic interest. But, outside 
of her labors in behalf of public dependents, 
her chief activity was in hospital work. She 
is credited with having founded thirty-two 
hospitals, besides many, including two in Japan, 
that indirectly owed their inception to her in- 
fluence. 

In the hands of a woman like Dorothea 
Dix, the United States Government could not 
but feel confident that the needs of the army 
would be well looked after; and from the be- 
ginning to the end of the war she was unre- 
mitting in her endeavor to place the nursing 
[205] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

of the soldiers on a sound, broad, and alto- 
gether sufficient basis; to supervise closely 
the nurses whom she appointed, and to main- 
tain their efficiency and enthusiasm. 

This last, however, was the lightest of the 
many burdens that she willingly assumed. 
Every nurse was an enthusiast, from " Mother " 
Bickerdyke, Clara Barton, Amy Bradley, 
Margaret Breckinridge, and Helen Gilson to 
the least known of the multitude of self-effacing 
heroines who risked their lives in fever-hospital 
or on the firing-line. Only enthusiasm of the 
rarest, highest, noblest type, coupled with the 
loftiest sense of duty, could have sustained 
them in the terrible ordeals through which they 
were called upon to pass. 

The picture of " Mother " Bickerdyke, lan- 
tern in hand, groping at midnight among Fort 
Donelson's dead, on the chance of finding 
some wounded man whom she could succor, 
but typifies the glorious — one might almost 
say, divine — enthusiasm that pervaded the 
[206] 




MOTHER " BICKERDYKE. 

From an engraving. 

Page 207. 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

whole body of nurses. Many of them sincerely 
felt, indeed, that they were called by God to 
their task of alleviation, as is impressively 
evidenced by a tale told of Mrs. Bickerdyke. 
After the battle of Shiloh she managed, though 
not attached to the Sanitary Commission, to 
procure some supplies from its stores, and at 
once set about doing everything in her power 
for the relief of the wounded. Says Mrs. Liver- 
more, the narrator of the incident: 

" One of the surgeons found her wrapped in 
the gray overcoat of a Confederate soldier, 
and wearing a soft slouch hat, having lost her 
inevitable Shaker bonnet. Her kettles had 
been set up, the fire kindled underneath, and 
she was dispensing hot soup, tea, crackers, 
whiskey and water, and other refreshments to 
the shivering, fainting, wounded men. 

** * Where did you get those things? ' the 
surgeon inquired. * And under whose authority 
are you working? ' 

" She paid no attention to his interrogations, 
[207] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

and probably did not hear them, so completely- 
absorbed was she in her work of compassion. 

" Watching her with admiration for her 
varied skill — for she not only fed the wounded 
men, but temporarily dressed their wounds 
in some cases — he questioned her again : 

" ' Madam, you seem to combine in your- 
self a sick-diet kitchen and a medical staff. 
May I inquire under whose authority you are 
working? ' 

" Without pausing in her work, she replied: 

" * I have received my authority from the 
Lord God Almighty. Have you anything 
that ranks higher than that? ' " 

Many a nurse — and notably " Mother " 
Bickerdyke, who was present at nineteen 
battles — moved among the fallen, dressing 
wounds and assisting at amputations, while 
the storm of conflict was still raging with un- 
diminished stress. It was thus with Clara 
Barton, who equipped a hospital-train to 
follow the Army of the Potomac, and served 
[208] 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

with the surgeons on the battle-field of Antie- 
tam — when, as said above, ten thousand 
wounded soldiers were for four days cared for 
by the agents of the Sanitary Commission. 
After Antietam Miss Barton continued with 
the army almost throughout the campaign 
which culminated so disastrously at Fredericks- 
burg. 

In the same campaign was Helen Gilson, 
who had been rejected by Miss Dix on account 
of her youth, but nevertheless managed to 
get to the front and soon won recognition as 
a daring and capable nurse. She was on the 
field at Fredericksburg, Chancellor sville, and 
Gettysburg, and crowned her labors by faithful 
service under Grant in the long and bloody 
campaign from the Rapidan to Petersburg and 
Richmond. It was Miss Gilson to whom Doctor 
Bellows referred when, describing his experi- 
ences at Gettysburg, he said: 

" I went out to the field hospital of the Third 
Corps, where two thousand four hundred men 
[2091 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

lay in their tents, a vast army of mutilated 
humanity. One woman, young and fair, but 
grave and earnest, clothed in purity and mercy 
— the only woman in that whole vast camp — 
moved in and out of the hospital tents, speaking 
some tender word, giving some restoring cordial, 
holding the hand of a dying boy, or receiving 
the last words of a husband for his widowed 
wife. I can never forget how, amid scenes 
which under ordinary circumstances no woman 
could have appeared in without gross inde- 
corum, the holy pity and purity of this angel 
of mercy made her presence seem as fit as though 
she had indeed dropped out of Heaven. The 
men themselves, sick or well, seemed awed and 
purified by such a resident among them." 

There was scarcely another nurse so beloved 
by the soldiers, and the secret of her popularity 
is plainly indicated in a brief but telling word- 
picture drawn by Doctor W. H. Reed, one of 
the Sanitary Commission's physicians. It 
describes his first meeting with Miss Gilson, 
[2101 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

at Fredericksburg, in May, 1864, when that 
city was the place to which the wounded were 
brought for treatment before being sent to the 
hospitals at Washington and Baltimore. Doc- 
tor Reed writes as follows: 

*' One afternoon, when the atmosphere of 
our rooms was close and foul, and all were long- 
ing for a breath of our cooler Northern air, 
while the men were moaning in pain, or were 
restless with fever, and our hearts were sick 
with pity for the sufferers, I heard a light step 
upon the stairs; and, looking up, I saw a 
young lady enter, who brought with her such 
an atmosphere of calm and cheerful courage, 
so much freshness, such an expression of gentle, 
womanly sympathy, that her mere presence 
seemed to revive the drooping spirits of the 
men, and to give a new power of endurance 
through the long and painful hours of suffering. 
First with one, then at the side of another, a 
friendly word here, a gentle nod and smile 
there, a tender sympathy with each prostrate 
[2111 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

sufferer, a sympathy which could read in his 
eyes his longing for home love, and for the pres- 
ence of some absent one — in those few minutes 
hers was indeed an angel ministry. 

" Before she left the room she sang to them, 
first some stirring national melody, then some 
sonnet or plaintive hymn to strengthen the 
fainting heart; and I remember how the notes 
penetrated to every part of the building. 
Soldiers with less severe wounds, from the 
rooms above, began to crawl out into the entries, 
and men from below crept up on their hands 
and knees, to catch every note, and to receive 
the benediction of her presence — for such it 
was to them. Then she went away. I did not 
know who she was, but I was as much moved 
and melted as any soldier of them all. This 
is my first reminiscence of Helen L. Gilson." 

Bearing in mind that Doctor Reed wrote 

of a period when Miss Gilson had been working 

for the soldiers for more than two years, and 

most of the time under the strenuous conditions 

[2121 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

of active campaigning, it becomes possible 
to appreciate the devotion and wonderful 
powers of endurance and self-mastery which she 
displayed. Yet, after all, hers was not an ex- 
ceptional case. Not a few army nurses, to 
be sure, like Margaret Breckinridge and Ara- 
bella Barlow, succumbed to the fearful strain 
put upon them, and, no less truly than the 
soldiers who perished in the trenches and on the 
field, gave their lives for their country. But 
there were many — notable among whom were 
Miss Dix and Miss Barton, of whose splendid 
record in Red Cross work the world is well 
aware — who not only served through the 
war without any impairment of either their 
zeal or their strength, but continued to busy 
themselves for years afterwards in labors 
scarcely less exacting and no less valuable to 
the nation. 

The same is true of Julia Ward Howe, who 
shortly before her death two years ago was 
reverently acclaimed " the most distinguished 
[213] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

woman in the United States," and whose 
unique contribution to the Union cause — her 
immortal " Battle Hymn of the Republic " — 
will always be reckoned among the noblest 
songs of American patriotism. It was written 
in the autumn of 1861, during a visit to Wash- 
ington. While there Mrs. Howe, with a party 
of friends, attended a review of Northern 
troops on the Virginia side of the Potomac, 
and chanced to witness a sudden attack by the 
enemy, thus getting a glimpse of real warfare. 
On the way back to the capital the party 
sang a number of war songs, including " John 
Brown's Body," and one of them remarked 
how much better the tune of that song was 
than the words. Mrs. Howe, under the in- 
spiration of what she had seen that afternoon, 
determined to write something of her own 
that would be more appropriate to the stirring 
melody; and that same night the " Battle 
Hymn " was composed, with its wonderful 
lines: 

[214] 




JULIA WARD HOWE IN 1865 

From a photograph. 

Page 214. 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

" Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: 
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath 

are stored; 
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift 

sword: 

His truth is marching on. 

" I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling 

camps; 
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and 

damps; 
I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring 

lamps. 

His day is marching on. 

" I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: 
* As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace 

shall deal; 
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his 

heel. 

Since God is marching on.* 

" He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call 

retreat; 
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment- 
seat: 
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! 
Our God is marching on. 
[2151 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

*' In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, 
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; 
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. 
While God is marching on." 

Finally, to complete the record of woman's 
patriotism, self-sacrifice, and heroism in the 
colossal conflict of the sixties, something must 
be said of the manner in which the women of 
the South responded to what was to them fully 
as much as to the women of the North, a clarion 
call to their best endeavors. Nothing could 
be farther from the truth than to imagine, as 
some writers on the Civil War seem to have 
imagined, that they contented themselves with 
waving dainty handkerchiefs at the marching 
men in gray, and then sat idly down to await 
the outcome. They could not have done this 
had they wished — for it was at their doors 
that the war was fought — and there was not 
a woman among them who did so wish. From 
the wives and daughters of the old Southern 
aristocracy to the girl in calico of the strag- 
[2161 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

gling mountain settlements, they gave them- 
selves with one accord to the task of aiding 
their army by every means at their com- 
mand. 

To them, in truth, the torments and horrors 
of the war were brought home with far more 
immediate force than to their Northern sisters. 
The husband or son to whom in the morning 
they gave a fond adieu might ere night be car- 
ried to them stark and cold in death. They 
themselves, during the long sieges, were con- 
stantly exposed to the perils of the bombard- 
ment. In the last stages of the war they were 
on the verge of starvation, and many actually 
perished for want of food. Yet all the time 
they kept up a brave heart, held back the tears 
of bitterness and bereavement, and, even when 
their resources were lowest, nobly strove, just 
as the Northern women were striving, to sup- 
port and comfort and relieve their soldier 
boys. 

All over the South soldiers' aid societies 
[2171 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

were formed similar to those of the North, an- 
imated by the same enthusiasm, though pre- 
vented by circumstances from accompHshing 
as much in the way of concrete results. There 
was no sacrifice which they were unwilling 
to make for the Confederacy and for the Con- 
federacy's soldiers. 

" When war raised a loud cry for need," 
exclaimed John Dimitry, in an eloquent tribute 
to the women of Louisiana, " Beauregard was 
calling upon his sisters who spoke French and 
his other sisters who spoke English to send 
him metal for his guns. Quick to the melter 
and blacksmith's forge! Are these your fretted 
brass candelabra, madame? Brought across 
seas, and handed down from one generation 
to the next, you say? What of that.'^ Beaure- 
gard calls, his need will not brook delay. This 
tall, slender, lily-cupped candlestick, too, in 
the young girl's chamber, let it be brought 
out! And those massive polished andirons 
Dorcas has been so proud of. Take down the 
[2181 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

metal bell that rings the plantation signals. 
Look well around ! " ^ 

In Virginia, in the Carolinas, in Georgia, 
and Alabama, and Tennessee it was the same. 
What can we do for the army? As in the North, 
women hurried to the front to tend the wounded, 
or labored in hastily improvised hospitals 
created over night in private homes, hotels, 
and warehouses. Mrs. Roger A. Pry or, in 
her " Reminiscences of Peace and V^^ar," which 
should be read by all who would know some- 
thing of what the women of the South suffered 
and achieved, has drawn graphic pictures of 
scenes in one of these temporary hospitals 
in Richmond, where the fairest and proudest of 
the daughters of the Old Dominion performed 
cheerfully the most menial and repellent tasks. 
On the battle-field, whether in attendance as 
volunteer nurses, or caught unawares like old 
Allie McPeek, they could always be relied 

^ In General C. A. Evan's " Confederate Military History," 
vol. X, pp. 285-286. 

[219] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

upon to render cool, unterrified service. The 
story of Allie McPeek ^ admirably illustrates 
the spirit shared by all of high or low 
degree. 

She was a poor widow living on a little farm 
two miles from Jonesboro, Georgia. When the 
armies of Schofield and Hardee fought the 
battle of Jonesboro, in September, 1864, her 
house was for two days under fire. According 
as the fortunes of war changed, it would be 
for a time within the lines of the Union 
troops, then within those of the Confederates, 
and at times directly between both. Yet all 
the while she remained in her ruined home, 
converting it into a hospital, and for forty- 
eight hours, regardless of her danger, kept 
hard at work helping the surgeons of both 
armies. 

So nobly did she bear herself that when the 
battle was over General Schofield, of the vic- 

^ Southern Historical Society's " Papers," vol. xxiii, pp. 
328-329. 

[2201 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

torious Northern army, sent her a large wagon- 
load of provisions, together with a long and 
touching letter of thanks and a promise that 
if, after the war, she presented his letter to 
the United States Government she would be 
compensated for her losses. Uncle Sam, it 
is good to know, redeemed his general's pledge, 
rejoicing the heart of old Allie McPeek with 
a check for six hundred dollars. 

Then there was the Tennessee mother who 
gave five sons to the Confederacy, and who, 
when Bishop Polk was endeavoring to console 
her for the loss of the first to be slain, looked 
him in the eye without a tear, and bravely 
said: 

** My son Billy will be old enough next 
spring to take his brother's place." 

Of still greater pathos is the story told by 
Mrs. John R. Eggleston, concerning a friend 
of hers, a widow, whose two sons, her only 
support, fell in the hopeless struggle. 

" Both my boys are gone," said she, " but 
[221] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

if I had to do all this over again, I would not 
act differently." 

The famous " Mother " Bickerdyke had 
her counterpart in the South in Mrs. Sallie 
Chapman Law, born in the Yadkin River sec- 
tion of North Carolina, which has given so 
many great-hearted men and women to the 
making of America. When the war broke out, 
she was living in Memphis, where she became 
an active worker in hospitals; and when noth- 
ing more could be done in Memphis, she went 
through the lines to labor 'mid the cannon 
smoke. It was not without reason that Gen- 
eral Joseph E. Johnston once paraded thirty 
thousand of his weary and tattered veterans 
in a review given in her honor. 

Mrs. Newsom, of Arkansas, was another 
devoted Southern nurse, a lady who " surren- 
dered all the comforts of home to do what she 
could for the suffering of our army." So was 
Kate Gumming, of Mobile, whose brother 
was in battle while she was nursing the wounded 
[222] 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR 

at Corinth. This lady has, in fact, left a most 
informative record of her war-time experiences, 
in her " Journal of Hospital Life in the Confed- 
erate Army of the Tennessee," a book that 
vividly, if fragmentarily, reveals the tremen- 
dous handicaps under which the daughters of 
the Confederacy performed their self-imposed 
duties as nurses, and the courage with which 
they faced the dangers to which they found 
themselves from time to time exposed. 

Thus, North and South the story is the same 
— a record of quiet and unostentatious, but 
glorious and sublime, self-sacrificing heroism. 



223] 



CHAPTER VII 

THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 

IMPRESSIVE and often thrilling as has 
been the story of woman's work and influ- 
ence in past epochs of American history, it 
is safe to say that never has she played a more 
important part than she is playing to-day. 
Within the space of a comparatively few years 
she has extended her activities in directions 
and to a degree undreamed by the noble matrons 
and maids who in former times presented such 
inspiring examples to their own and future 
generations. In all walks of life — in business, in 
professional pursuits, in the arts — the American 
woman is more numerously and conspicuously 
represented than ever before. Nor has she 
thereby lost any of the distinctive charms of 
her womanliness, or in any way weakened her 
[224] 



THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 

claim on our affection, esteem, admiration, 
and gratitude. 

With increased freedom for individual self- 
expression she has gained, and taken advan- 
tage of, increased power to make her collective 
influence felt for good in the life of the nation. 
Nothing is more significant in this connection 
than the growth of the so-called " woman's 
club," which has been the subject of so much 
ill-natured and ill-advised criticism. It has 
been charged that the club movement among 
women involved neglect of home duties, would 
increase frivolity, and meant the ultimate dis- 
ruption of family life. However well-grounded 
these objections may be in the case of other 
countries, they are glaringly erroneous when 
applied to the United States. Here the woman's 
club has developed into a most valuable and 
powerful instrument for social betterment. 

Its remote origin, as was said in the opening 
chapter, may with some reason be traced to the 
meetings of those early Puritan women who 
[2251 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

used to assemble at Mrs. Anne Hutchinson's 
home in seventeenth-century Boston and dis- 
cuss theological and other burning questions 
of the day. But it was not until the middle 
of the nineteenth century that women's clubs 
in the modern sense began to make their ap- 
pearance with the organization of the Ladies' 
Library Society, of Kalamazoo, Michigan, 
and the Minerva Club, of New Harmony, 
Indiana, the establishment of which speaks 
volumes for the progressiveness of the women 
of the Middle West. 

Any immediate extension of the movement 
thus set on foot was prevented by the outbreak 
of the Civil War. Nevertheless, the woman's 
club indirectly gained greatly from that tre- 
mendous conflict. The notable services ren- 
dered by the Sanitary Commission and its 
subsidiary soldiers' aid societies, went far to 
remove long-standing prejudices against the 
participation of women in public affairs, and 
at the same time helped women to realize the 
[2261 



THE WOMEN OF TO - DAY 

progress they might hope to achieve by organ- 
ized cooperation. There had long been a grow- 
ing sentiment that the laws and customs of 
the country worked to the disadvantage of 
women, and after the Civil War this sentiment 
crystallized and found expression, on the one 
hand in an " equal suffrage " movement, and 
on the other in the " club " movement, which 
was definitely launched in 1868 by the founding, 
almost simultaneously, of the New England 
Woman's Club and the oddly named Sorosis. ^ 

The former owed its inception largely to 
the genius of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, who 
had even then attained international reputa- 
tion, not only as the author of the " Battle 
Hymn of the Republic " but also as a zealous 
humanitarian. Only the previous year she 
and her husband, the great-hearted Doctor 
Samuel G. Howe, had won the warm gratitude 
of the people of Greece for visiting them and 
aiding them in their struggle for national in- 
dependence. Under the influence of Mrs. 
[2271 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

Howe and her associates — who included such 
well-known women as Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs. 
Mary A. Livermore, and Mrs. Edna P. Cheney 
— the idea of social service was from the first 
a leading principle in the New England Woman's 
Club. Besides providing literary programmes 
for the entertainment and cultural develop- 
ment of its members, it struck out along phil- 
anthropic lines, establishing a free employ- 
ment bureau and a horticultural school for 
girls. 

In connection with the founding of Sorosis, 
an interesting story is told. When Charles 
Dickens made his second American visit, in 
1867-1868, he was given a banquet by the Press 
Club of New York. Mrs. Jane Cunningham 
Croly, the brilliant newspaper woman whose 
writings under the pseudonym of " Jennie 
June " have delighted so many thousands 
of readers, was at the time a member of the 
editorial staff of the World, and it seemed to 
her only right and fitting that she should 
[2281 



THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 

attend the Press Club's banquet, Her applica- 
tion for a ticket met with a prompt refusal, 
on the score of her sex. 

Greatly disappointed, and not a little in- 
censed, Mrs. Croly invited a number of her 
friends — among whom were Mrs. Charlotte 
B. Wilbour, Mrs. Eliza Botta, Kate Field, and 
Alice and Phoebe Cary — to meet at her home 
and discuss the formation of a club exclusively 
for women. The result of their meeting was 
the birth of Sorosis, in March, 1868, with Alice 
Cary as its first president. 

There were only twelve charter members, 
but before the year was out, Sorosis had grown 
remarkably both in numbers and influence. 
Other women in other cities began to organize, 
some along the lines of the New England 
Woman's Club, but more taking the pioneer 
New York club as their model. According to 
a clubwoman of wide experience, Helen M. 
Winslow, " no other club in the country has 
been so much copied, imitated, and envied as 
[2291 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

the j&rst and famous Sorosis." Interest in the 
club movement was intensified by the meeting 
of a Congress of Women, convened in New York 
in 1869, in response to a call from Mrs. Croly. 
Four years later, and again mainly on the in- 
itiative of Mrs. Croly, the Association for the 
Advancement of Women was founded, under 
the presidency of Mrs. Livermore, who was 
afterward succeeded by Mrs. Howe. Than 
these three women — Mrs. Croly, Mrs. Howe, 
and Mrs. Livermore — none deserve greater 
credit as constructive pioneers in promoting 
the interests and extending the influence of 
the women of present-day America^ 

Naturally enough, while many of the women's 
clubs followed the example of the New England 
organization and embarked in various phil- 
anthropic enterprises, their chief concern at 
first was to benefit their individual members 
and to secure greater freedom of action for 
women in general. But as time brought with 
it increased recognition of " woman's rights," 
[2301 



THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 

they became decreasingly self -centered. They 
acquired, so to speak, a *' community conscious- 
ness," and began to attack problems of impor- 
tance to them not only as women and mothers, 
but as residents of the cities and towns in which 
they made their homes. 

They undertook, for example, to study the 
conditions of life among the poor, and to agitate 
for sanitary and other reforms that would pro- 
mote the health, happiness, and efficiency of 
slum dwellers. They established and aided 
educational institutions of all sorts — public 
libraries, schools of domestic science, manual- 
training schools, kindergartens. Some laid 
stress on the need for reforms in municipal 
government and administration. Others be- 
came busy hives of cooperative industry, a 
most impressive illustration being found in the 
work of the Woman's Educational and Indus- 
trial Union, a Boston organization which was 
founded in the eighties, to-day boasts a mem- 
bership of three thousand, and annually ex- 
[2311 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

pends forty thousand dollars in helping the 
poor to help themselves. 

The next and inevitable step was a union 
of the different clubs scattered in all parts of 
the United States. This was foreshadowed 
in 1889, when a few literary clubs, in response 
to a call from Sorosis, federated with one an- 
other. In the following year, likewise on the 
invitation of Sorosis — and Mrs. Croly — 
delegates met in New York to form what 
has since become of nation-wide importance 
as the General Federation of Women's 
Clubs. 

Beginning with a membership of less than 
one hundred clubs, it has grown until, after 
an interval of not yet a quarter of a century, 
it comprises over five thousand clubs, with a 
total membership of four hundred thousand 
women. Add to these the members of organ- 
izations independent of, but affiliated with, 
the General Federation — such as the Inter- 
national Sunshine Society, the Woman's Out- 
[232] 



THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 

door Art League of the American Civic As- 
sociation, the National Society of New England 
Women, and the Woman's National Press 
Association — and we have an army of more 
than a million well-organized, well-directed, 
and enthusiastic women whose watchwords 
are " The Home, Patriotism, and Good 
Government." 

The presence of such an army is in itself 
a guarantee of a happy future for the land in 
which we dwell. All over the country the club- 
women are waging a great battle for social 
progress. They are fighting vice and crime, 
ignorance and disease; they are demanding 
humane legislation to protect the weak and 
lowly; they make no compromise with greed, 
brutality, or injustice; everywhere they are 
carrying on a great educational campaign to 
promote a higher cultural development, a 
livelier civic sense, and a loftier morality in 
the individual and in the nation. Their out- 
look is in no way restricted. They labor for 
[233] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

the welfare not only of the people of their own 
day but of generations yet unborn. 

" Except in the United States Congress," 
emphatically asserts Josiah Strong, president 
of the American Institute for Social Service, 
" I know of no body of men or women represent- 
ing so much of intellect and heart, so much of 
culture and influence, and so many of the 
highest hopes and noblest possibilities of the 
American people as the General Federation of 
Women's Clubs." 

Similar testimony comes from Ben. B. Lind- 
sey, the Colorado man who has made such a 
splendid record as judge of the juvenile court 
in Denver. ** For the past few years," he says, 
" I have been actively engaged in the interest of 
better laws for the protection of the home and 
the children. In this behalf I have visited some 
twenty States. I have found wonderful prog- 
ress, and scarcely without exception it has been 
the members of the women's clubs who have 
championed every good law and secured the 
[234] 



THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 

passage of nearly all the advanced legislation 
upon the statute books for the protection of 
the home and the children." 

" It would take a volume to give you ade- 
quately a small portion of what I know as to 
the beneficence of activities of women in con- 
nection with American Civic Association work 
and kindred work," writes J. Horace McFar- 
land, president of the American Civic Associa- 
tion, in a letter to the author. " Some things 
they do so exceptionally well that I do not see 
how the work could be done without them. 
I have said a great many times on the platform, 
in answering calls from communities for ad- 
dresses intended to get those communities 
started in practical work for better living con- 
ditions, that I did not know of a successful 
regenerative movement that was not inspired 
or underwritten by the women of the com- 
munity." 

The facts bear out these glowing tributes. 
To give a notable instance, the organized 
[235] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

pressure brought to bear by clubwomen was 
a potent factor in effecting the sorely needed 
reform embodied in the Pure Food Law of 
1906. The General Federation of Women's 
Clubs declared for its enactment, as did the 
State Federations in the General Federation 
and individual clubs in the State Federations. 
Committees were appointed for the express 
purpose of educating public opinion to the im- 
portance of the proposed law and persuading 
reluctant Congressmen to vote the right way. 
In the opinion of many good judges, the influ- 
ence thus exercised was absolutely decisive. 
And even to-day, six years after the victory 
has been won, the pure food committees of 
the General and State Federations are hard 
at work, determined that there shall be no 
evasion of the law, and agitating for further 
reforms, particularly in the way of improving 
the milk supply and improving sanitary con- 
ditions in markets and provision stores. 

Similarly, the clubwomen have thrown them- 
[236] 



THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 

selves heart and soul into the movement now 
under way for the conservation of America's 
natural resources and scenic assets. The saving 
of the Palisades on the Hudson River was chiefly 
due to the energetic action of women's clubs 
in New Jersey. The famous cliff dwellings of 
Colorado would have been lost to the nation 
had it not been for the beneficent activity of 
a number of Colorado women who organized 
a Colorado Cliff Dwellings Association, gained 
the support of the General Federation of Wom- 
en's Clubs, and instituted a successful campaign 
for the creation of the Mesa Verde National 
Park. 

In Minnesota, women prevented a " land 
grab," and afterward secured the enactment 
of a State forestry law to put a stop to the depre- 
dations of lumbermen and town-site operators. 
The State Federation of New Hampshire lent 
powerful aid m the struggle for the preservation 
of the White Mountain forests. So, too, in 
New York, where the State Federation has 
[2371 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

battled bravely against the vandalism that 
threatens to convert the Adirondacks and the 
Catskills into barren wastes. Elsewhere, par- 
ticularly in Pennsylvania, Maine, Massachu- 
setts, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Georgia, 
Tennessee, and California, women's clubs 
have done splendid work for forest preserva- 
tion. 

The movement to rescue Niagara Falls 
from the rapacious grasp of commercialism 
has been loyally supported by women in all 
parts of the country.) Both through their 
clubs and as individuals they are ably seconding 
the efforts of the American Civic Association, 
which has made the saving of Niagara its 
special care. Mr. McFarland, from whom I 
have already quoted, tells a good story illus- 
trative of the interest and enthusiasm shown 
by the women of the United States in attacking 
the Niagara problem. As president of the 
American Civic Association he had occasion to 
attend several hearings in Washington. At 
[238] 



THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 

one hearing, held in the War OflSce, President 
Taft, then Secretary of War, after Hstening 
to what Mr. McFarland had to urge in behalf 
of Niagara, turned to him with some impatiencCj 
and said: "Why, you have made even my 
mother and aunt write me, begging me to save 
Niagara Falls!" Well may Mr. McFarland 
say, as he does, that women have been most in- 
sistent for righteousness in this cause. 

Another problem of national importance to 
which the clubwomen are giving earnest and 
productive thought is the securing of remedial 
industrial legislation for women and children. 
The industrial and child-labor committees of 
the General and State Federations, and of 
many of their clubs, have gone into the homes 
of the workers, and into mills, factories, and 
stores, investigating the conditions under which 
women and children toil. Their aim is the 
utter abolition of child labor, and the pro- 
tection of working women from employers 
who would overwork them, or compel them to 
[239] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

labor under injurious conditions. In many 
cases special agents are employed, men and 
women quick to detect violations of existing 
laws, and skilled in gathering data to reinforce 
demands for reform. Of course they have met, 
and will continue to meet, bitter opposition; 
but they have already made appreciable prog- 
ress in awakening the public conscience and 
in compelling State legislatures to enact more 
enlightened laws. 

One phase of the " child rescue " campaign 
in which they have been signally successful 
is the creation of separate courts, reform schools, 
and probation systems for dealing with youth- 
ful offenders. The juvenile court plan origi- 
nated less than fifteen years ago, in Illinois, 
when the Chicago Woman's Club, horrified 
at conditions found to exist in Cook County 
jail, engaged a lawyer to draw up a bill which 
should strike at the roots of the pernicious 
system of herding young boys with hardened 
criminals. The new method went on trial 
[ 240 ] 



THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 

in 1899, and its merits were such that club- 
women everywhere began to insist on its ex- 
tension. It has since been adopted by so many 
States that the day does not seem far distant 
when the entire country will have abandoned 
the old-time practice of " sending a boy to 
school at the jailer's " — a practice which 
virtually denies the juvenile delinquent any 
chance of developing into a decent and useful 
member of society. 

Civil Service reform has received organized 
support from the women of present-day America 
since 1894, when there was founded in New York 
the Woman's Auxiliary of the Civil Service 
Reform Association. The General Federation 
of Women's Clubs has a standing committee 
on Civil Service reform, as have a majority 
of the State Federations, and their influence 
is constantly exercised toward a wider applica- 
tion of the merit system of appointment to 
public oflfice. Reform in municipal politics 
is another problem enlisting their sympathetic 
[2411 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

cooperation, and much good work has been ac- 
complished in this field by such organizations 
as the Woman's Municipal League of New York, 
the Civic Club of Philadelphia, and the Civic 
Federation of Denver. 

Clubwomen have likewise entered ardently 
into the movement to improve the sanitation, 
appearance, and general living conditions of 
American municipalities, and in many in- 
stances reforms have been brought about en- 
tirely as a result of their initiative. With 
their traveling libraries and art galleries they 
are reaching into remote communities, pro- 
moting education in the most isolated regions, 
fostering a love of the beautiful, and opening 
up vistas of enjoyment and recreation to many 
whose lives have formerly been a dreary monot- 
ony of unending toil. 

This brings me to a fact which, taken by 

itself, would amply justify the woman's club 

movement in the United States. In a very 

real sense it is eradicating the last lingering 

[2421 



THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 

remnants of the sectionalism that has more than 
once worked havoc to the nation. x\mong club- 
women there is no East and West, or North 
and South. They stand for a united people. 
In the biennial conventions of the General 
Federation of Women's Clubs they come to- 
gether from all parts of the country to plan for 
the good of the whole country. Even the per- 
sonnel of the General Federation's officers 
bears evidence to the absence of sectional 
lines. The same principle obtains in the ap- 
pointment of committees, and in the practical 
working out of Federation business the national 
idea is kept steadily to the fore, even when 
it is a question of dealing with problems pri- 
marily local rather than national in their 
significance. 

Thus, there stands in the heart of Georgia's 
mill region a model country school where 
children are taught, in addition to the three 
R's, manual training, domestic science, and 
gardening. It was founded and is maintained 
[243] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

at the joint expense of the Georgia Federation 
of Women's Clubs and the Massachusetts 
Federation, which has long been aiding the 
women of Georgia in combatting the evils of 
child labor in that State. And similarly in 
Tennessee, the Massachusetts Federation has 
established at Happy Valley a settlement like 
that established by the Tennessee Federation at 
Walker's Valley for the purpose of teaching 
the wives and daughters of the Tennessee 
mountaineers cooking, sewing, and other homely 
arts. 

All this, of course, tends to the making of 
a happier, better, and more progressive people. 
Nor are the federated women's clubs by any 
means the only organizations of women labor- 
ing to the same beneficent end. While it is 
true that no other organization approaches 
the General Federation of Women's Clubs in 
the scope of its activities, there are many which, 
created for special objects, are rendering serv- 
ices whose value to the nation it would be 
[244] 



THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 

difficult to overestimate. Pre-eminent among 
these is the National Woman's Christian 
Temperance Union, with which will ever be as- 
sociated the name of one of the noblest of 
American women, Frances E. Willard, who was 
its president for nearly twenty years. Its mem- 
bership is almost as impressive as that of the 
General Federation of Women's Clubs, having 
grown from a few thousand at the time of its 
founding, in 1874, to several hundred thousand 
enthusiastic " white ribboners." 

Perhaps their most noteworthy achievement 
is seen in the success attending their efforts 
to have the children of the United States — 
the " citizens of to-morrow " — instructed in 
the principles of scientific temperance. They 
have secured mandatory laws to this effect 
in every State in the Union, besides a Federal 
law applying to the District of Columbia, the 
Territories, and all Indian and military schools 
supported by the government; and as a result 
fully eighteen million children in our public 
[245] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

schools — according to statistics for which I 
am indebted to Mrs. Lillian M. N. Stevens, the 
present head of the National Woman's Chris- 
tian Temperance Union — are now receiving 
instruction as to the nature and effect of al- 
cohol and other narcotics on the human system. 
It is also estimated that at least sixteen million 
children receive temperance teaching in the 
Sunday schools of the country, and that five 
hundred thousand of these are pledged total 
abstainers. 

i The recent remarkable growth of prohibition 
sentiment, which has swung so many States 
into the " dry " column, must unquestionably 
be attributed in chief part to this policy of 
beginning from the bottom upward by educa- 
ting the future voter as to the harmful effects 
of the use of alcoholic beverages. Besides which, 
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union has 
directly and powerfully contributed to all of 
the prohibition victories, as has been frequently 
and even officially recognized. A few years 
[2461 



THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 

ago, for instance, at the time Tennessee voted 
for prohibition, the Legislature of that State 
adopted a resolution declaring that " to the 
good and consecrated women of the Tennessee 
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, we 
feel a debt of lasting gratitude, and are sen- 
sitive to the whole work they have accomplished 
even in the face of seemingly overwhelming 
odds." And in Georgia chivalric prohibition- 
ists insisted that " but for the untiring work 
and constant prayers of the women of the 
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the 
victory would not have been won," 

Aside from its anti-liquor activities, the 
Woman's Christian Temperance Union is 
earnestly engaged in advancing many other 
social reforms. It has done much for the great 
principle of international arbitration. Ad- 
vocates for better observance of the Sabbath 
find in it an unfailing ally. It is lending efficient 
aid to the movement to secure stricter laws for 
the protection of women and children. The wel- 
[247] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

fare of children, indeed, has always been one of 
its principal objects. It has been instrumental 
in securing legislation prohibiting the sale of to- 
bacco to minors. It has encouraged the estab- 
lishment of school savings banks. It has advo- 
cated physical education in public schools, and 
has cooperated with the General Federation of 
Women's Clubs and other organizations in 
promoting the extension of the kindergarten. 

In all of this, it has been actuated by the 
sound belief that the future of the country 
depends on the kind of training its boys and 
girls receive, and that by caring for their in- 
terests it will best live up to its motto — " For 
God and Home and Native Land." Altogether, 
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union 
must be accounted among the nation's richest 
assets. 

Then, also quite apart from the club move- 
ment, there are organizations of women for 
the promotion of religion, benevolence, patriot- 
ism, good government, education, and in fact 
[248] 



THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 

every worthy cause that one might name. Be- 
sides which, as need hardly be pointed out, the 
influence of the women of present-day America 
is immeasurably increased through their mem- 
bership in societies composed of both men and 
women. In such societies the latter often hold 
most responsible positions, and can always 
be depended upon to do their share in realizing 
the aims of the organization. Frequently they 
do far more than their share, as in the case of 
the three thousand charitable organizations 
of New York City, where the greater part of 
the actual work of investigating and relieving 
destitution is carried on by women. 

Just how many women all told are thus en- 
listed under the banner of social progress it 
is impossible to say, although the number must 
run far into the millions. It is still more out of 
the question to attempt to estimate the influ- 
ence which they exercise collectively and as indi- 
viduals. Who can measure, for instance, the 
influence exercised by Miss Helen Gould or 
[249] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

Miss Jane Addams? It is almost twenty years 
since Miss Addams first took up her residence 
in Hull House, and began her settlement work 
among the toilers of Chicago. Under her able 
direction Hull House has developed into a 
center of the highest civic and social life. 
Thousands of people visit it every week during 
the winter months to attend lectures, debates, 
and theatrical entertainments; to gain instruc- 
tion in industrial arts; to take part in its 
club life; and to study literature, science, 
history, civics, the languages, and the fine 
arts. Originally it comprised only four rooms 
on the second floor of an old residence; to-day 
it has spread out until it might figuratively 
be called a city within a city. Its fame has gone 
forth over the world, and the name of Miss 
Addams is an inspiration to many who have 
never seen her. 

So with all American women, well known, 
little known, or not known at all, who are 
striving for the good of their country. One and 
[2501 



THE WOMEN OF TO - DAY 

all they radiate an influence whose cumulative 
effect must result, and will result, in the up- 
building of a greater America than the America 
of to-day. 

There is the likelihood, too, that the American 
woman of future generations will be in a better 
position to make her influence felt than are 
her sisters of to-day. Certainly the signs of 
the times point unmistakably to her securing 
at no distant period, that full and equal " right 
to vote " for which the Grimke sisters, Lucy 
Stone, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Stanton, Susan B. 
Anthony, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Howe, and 
their feUow-pioneers in advocacy of " woman's 
rights," so bravely fought in days gone by.. 
One after another the States of the Union are 
recognizing the justice of their claims; are 
recognizing that, in the light of all that woman 
has done for America in the past, and all that 
she is doing to-day, the giving of the vote to 
women can only result in still greater good to 
the Republic. 

[251] 



WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA 

Let me conclude by once more reminding 
my readers of what that wise Frenchman, 
Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote many years ago: 

" If I were asked to what the singular pros- 
perity and growing strength of the American 
people ought mainly to be attributed, I should 
reply — to the superiority of their women." 

Were de Tocqueville alive to-day, and were 
he to undertake a revision of his " Democracy 
in America," that is one passage which he 
assuredly would leave untouched. 



9 



[2521 



INDEX 



Abolition movement, early 
history of, 157-162; 
women in, 163-187. 

Addams, Jane, and Hull 
House, 250. 

Aiken, Mrs. J., 102. 

Aldrich, Anne, 101. 

Aldrich, Milly, 193. 

American Revolution, wom- 
an's work in, 81-114. 

Anthony, Susan B., and 
equal suffrage movement, 
251. 

Austin, Ann, persecution of, 
33-34. 

Barlow, Arabella, Civil War 
nurse, 213. 

Bartlett, Mrs. A., 193. 

Barton, Clara, with Army 
of the Potomac, 208-209; 
also mentioned, 206, 213. 

*' Battle Hymn of the Re- 
public," how written, 214; 
text, 215-216. 

Bellows, H. W., on woman's 
work in Civil War, 188, 
189 n.; account of Helen 
Gilson by, 209-210. 

Berry, Mrs. S., 87-88. 

Bickerdyke, " Mother," 
Civil War nurse, 206-208, 
222. 

Birkbeck, M., on westward 
movement, 116. 



Birney, Catherine H., on 
Grimk6 sisters, 165, 169- 
171, 171-173. 

Boone, D., and Wilderness 
Road, 115, 123; and settle- 
ment of Kentucky, 119- 
123. 

Boone, Jemima, Indian cap- 
tivity of, 124-125. 

Boone, Rebecca, 119, 122, 
123, 126, 152. 

Botta, Eliza, and founding 
of Sorosis, 229. 

Boyer, Margaret, 199. 

Bradley, Amy, Civil War 
nurse, 206. 

Brayton, Miss, 189 n. 

Breckinridge, Margaret, 
Civil War nurse, 206, 213. 

Brent, Margaret, first Ameri- 
can "suffragette," 26-28. 

Bryan's Station, siege of, 
140-150. 

Burnaby, A., on amusements 
of Philadelphians, 47-48; on 
New York society, 48-49. 

Business women, early 
American, 24-28, 54-58. 

Callaway sisters, Indian cap- 
tivity of, 124-125. 

Campbell, Miss, 189 n. 

"Captain Molly," 90-91. 

Cave Dwellers in Pennsyl- 
vania, 9. 



253] 



INDEX 



Chapman, Maria W., and 
abolition movement, 163. 

Cheney, Edna P., and found- 
ing of New England Wom- 
an's Club, 228. 

Child labor, 239-240. 

Child, Lydia M., and aboli- 
tion movement, 174-178. 

Civic reform, 235, 241-242. 

Civil Service reform, 241. 

Civil War, woman's work in, 
188-223. 

Clubs, women's, origin and 
development of, 225-232; 
General Federation organ- 
ized, 232; present-day 
work of, 233-248. 

Coffin, Mrs. P., 102-104. 

Colburn, Bertha L., on work 
of New Hampshire women 
in American Revolution, 
102-104. 

Collins, Miss, 189 n. 

Conservation of national re- 
sources, 237-239. 

Cook, Mrs. J. and Mrs. H., 
adventure with Indians, 
135-136. 

Cooper, Mrs. W. M., 199. 

Crandall, Prudence, and ed- 
ucation of colored chil- 
dren, 181-184. 

Croly, Jane C, and found- 
ing of Sorosis, 228-229; 
and formation General 
Federation of Women's 
Clubs, 232; also mentioned, 
230. 

Cumming, Kate, Civil War 
nurse, 222-223. 



Darrah, Lydia, Revolution- 
ary exploit of, 109-112. 



Davenport, Mrs. J., 25. 

Davies, Mrs. J., Kentucky 
pioneer, 151. 

Dennis, Hannah, Indian cap- 
tivity of, 74-79. 

Dimitry, J., on devotion of 
Louisiana women in Civil 
War, 218-219. 

Dix, Dorothea L., selected as 
head of Union nurses, 203; 
early philanthropic work of, 
204-205; also mentioned, 
209 213 

Draper, Mary, 86, 104-105. 

Drayton Hall, 54, 57. 

Duston, Hannah, Indian cap- 
tivity of, 13-16; also men- 
tioned, 42, 74. 

Dyer, Mary, convert to Qua- 
kerism, 35; banished from 
Massachusetts, 35; re- 
turns, 36; sentenced to 
death, 36; appeals to Gen- 
eral Court, 36-39; re- 
prieved, 40; again sen- 
tenced, 41; executed, 42; 
also mentioned, 179. 

Education, 180-184, 231, 233, 

242, 243, 246, 248. 
Equal suffrage movement, 

26, 28, 227, 251. 
Ewing, Sarah, 199. 

Ferguson, Isabella, 113. 
Ferree, Mary, Pennsylvania 

pioneer, 25. 
Field, Kate, and founding of 

Sorosis, 229. 
Fisher, Mary, persecution of, 

33-34. 
Foster, Abby, and abolition 

movement, 178, 179-180. 



[254 



INDEX 



Garnson, W. L., and aboli- Indian captivities 13-23, 

tion movement, 158, 161, 74-79, 124-125 
162, 163, 179, 182. 

Gilson, Helen, Civil War Johnson, Jemima S., Bryan's 

rtr\a orvrv n-in G+«^ + ;^»^ T ; i^r t a rt 



nurse, 206, 209-212. 

Glidden, Mrs. C, 102. 

Gould, Helen, 249. 

Greene, Catharine, with Rev- 
olutionary army, 97. 

Grier, Mrs., 189 n. 

Grimke sisters, and aboli- 
tion movement, 163-173; 
and equal suffrage move- 
ment, 251. 

Grover, Priscilla, 199. 

Haddon, Elizabeth, New 
Jersey pioneer, 25. 

Hard, Elizabeth, experiences 
in early Pennsylvania, 9- 
10. 

Hawkins, Mrs. W., 102. 

Hedge, Mrs., 189 n. 

Holley, Sallie, and aboli- 
tion movement, 179, 180. 

Houston, Mrs., and settle- 
ment of Tennessee, 153- 
155. 

Howe, Julia W., and writing 
of " The Battle Hymn of 
the Republic," 213-216; 



Station heroine, 145-148. 
Juvenile courts, 234, 240- 
241. 

Kentucky, women's experi- 
ences in early, 123-126, 
134-153. 

King Philip, 17, 22, 23. 

Knox, Lucy, with Revolu- 
tionary army, 97. 

Law, Sallie C, Civil War 
nurse, 222. 

Leonardson, S., Indian cap- 
tivity of, 14-16. 

Lindsey, B. B., on woman's 
club movement, 234-235. 

Livermore, Mary A., on 
work of Western women in 
Civil War, 195-196; on 
work of *• Mother " Bick- 
erdyke, 207-208; and 
founding of New England 
Woman^s Club, 228; also 
mentioned, 189 n., 230. 
251. 

Lovejoy, E. P., murder of, 
162. 



and founding o f N e w t ^^^^' t^,,^„ ,qq 
England Woman's Club, j^lL ' • t^ i 
227-228; also mentioned, ^Xi il3-llT '"^ " 



230, 251. 

Hull House, 250. 

Hutchinson, Anne, first 
American " clubwoman," 
28; troubles with Massa- 
chusetts authorities, 29- 
32; banished, 33; death, 
33; also mentioned, 34, 
42, 226. 

[265] 



Lundy, B., and abolition 
movement, 158, 179. 

Matteson, Dorcas, 101. 

May, Miss, 189 n. 

McFarland, J. H., on wom- 
an's share in work of 
American Civic ABSOcia- 
tion, 236, 238-239. 



INDEX 



McPeek, Allie, heroine of 
battle of Jonesboro, 220- 
221. 

Merrill, Mrs. J., adventure 
with Indians, 136-137. 

Moore, Mrs., 189 n. 

Morris, Deborah, onElizabeth 
Hard's experiences, 9-10. 

Mott, Lucretia, and aboli- 
tion movement, 178-179 : 
and equal suffrage move- 
ment, 251. 

National Woman's Christian 
Temperance Union, aims 
and work of, 244-248. 

Neff, Mary, Indian cap- 
tivity of, 14-16. 

New England Woman's 
Club, 227-228, 229. 

Newsom, Mrs., Civil War 
nurse, 222. 

Pennsylvania Hall, burning 
of, 160, 171. 

Philadelphia Dancing As- 
sembly, founding of, 46. 

Philadelphia '* refreshment 
saloons," 199-202. 

Pilgrim mothers, landing in 
America of, 8-9. 

Pinckney, Eliza L., and early 
Southern plantation life, 
54-58. 

Plummer, Eliza, 199. 

Poole, Elizabeth, and found- 
ing of Taunton, Massachu- 
setts, 24-25. 

Pryor, Mrs. R. A., on hero- 
ism of Southern women in 
Civil War, 219. 

Pure Food Law, 236. 



Putnam, Carolina, and edu- 
cation of colored children, 
180. 

Quakers, persecution of, 33- 
42; also mentioned, 9, 109, 
165, 179. 

Reed, Abigail, 102. 

Reed, Esther, and relief 
work during Revolution, 
106-108. 

Reid, Mrs. G., 102. 

Robinson, Hannah, love 
story of, 59-64. 

Ross, Anna M., 199. 

Rouse, Mrs., 189 n. 

Rowlandson, Mary, Indian 
captivity of, 16-23; re- 
moval to Connecticut, 23 
n.; also mentioned, 42. 

Sampson, Deborah, career in 
American army, 91-96. 

Sandys, Sir E., and settle- 
ment of Virginia, 5-6. 

Schuyler, Miss, 189 n. 

Social life in the colonies, 46- 
54. 

Sorosis, 227, 228-229. 

Stanton, Mrs., and equal 
suffrage movement, 251. 

Steel, Katharine, 86. 

Stevenson, Miss, 189 n. 

Stone, Lucy, and founding 
of New England Woman's 
Club, 228; and equal suf- 
frage movement, 251. 

Stowe, Harriet B., and 
" Uncle Tom's Cabin." 
185-186; also mentioned, 
174. 



256] 



INDEX 



Strong, J., on the General 
Federation of Women's 
Clubs, 234. 

Thomas, Jane, 112-113. 

Tocqueville, A. de, on wom- 
an's work in the United 
States, 1-2, 252. 

United States Sanitary Com- 
mission, organization and 
work of, 190-192; how 
money raised for, 197-198. 

Vansdale, Elizabeth, 199 
Virginia maids, 6-8. 

Wade, Mary, 199. 
Washington, Martha, with 

Revolutionary army, 97- 

101. 



Westward movement, women 
in, 115-155. 

Wilbour, Charlotte, and 
founding of Sorosis, 229. 

Willard, Frances E., 245. 

Winslow, Helen M., on in- 
fluence of Sorosis, 229. 

Witherspoon, R., account of 
pioneering conditions in 
South Carolina, 66-71. 

" Woman's Rights," 28, 230. 

Wright, Mrs. D., 89. 



Zane, Elizabeth, heroism in 
siege of Wheeling, 127- 
133. 

Zellers, Christina, Pennsyl- 
vania pioneer, 71; adven- 
ture with Indians, 72. 



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OCT 9 1912 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




011 527 457 



